NAWMP January 17, 2007
Panel Discussion
Tape #3, Side A
*I’m Bob Streeter, retired Fish & Wildlife Service, and we’re here at the National Conservation Training Center on January 17th 2007. About 21 years ago the North American Waterfowl Management Plan was signed. It’s an international agreement to restore waterfowl populations to the levels that we’d seen in [the] past. The way that was done was through Joint Ventures in Canada [and the] United States. Today were fortunate enough to have representatives of the Joint Ventures in the United States, to describe some of the early activities in their Joint Ventures; how they got started; what their problems were; what their opportunities were; and the different way of organizing at those Joint Ventures. And so I’d like to have this panel introduce themselves. We have five, from five of the Joint Ventures in [the] United States, and have them say who they are; where they are now; when they started with the Joint Venture; and then we’ll go on to some other questions. So, let’s start with -- Paul, you were our first Joint Venture Coordinator in the Prairie Potholes.
*My name is Paul Hartman. As Bob indicated, I was the first Prairie Pothole Joint Venture Coordinator. And I served in that position from 1987 to 1989. [I] subsequently retired from the Fish & Wildlife Service in 1995.
*My name is Carey Smith. I was the Pacific Coast Joint Venture Coordinator, starting with the beginning of the Joint Venture in 1990. And I’ve continued to be the Joint Venture [Coordinator] through 2006.
*I’m Dave Paullin. I was the Joint Venture Coordinator in the Central Valley of California from 1989 to 1998. [I’m] currently retired from Fish & Wildlife Service, living in Sheridan, Wyoming.
*I’m Jerry Johnson. I was the Joint Venture Coordinator for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture. [I] started out with the beginning. I was the Coordinator through 1993, and then I retired from the Fish & Wildlife Service.
*And I’m Charles Baxter. I’m the Joint Venture Coordinator for the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture. I was the first coordinator in January 1988, and am still, and currently, the Coordinator for the Lower Miss. Joint Venture.
Bob Streeter -- Well, that was a pretty serious series of responses. I can remember back in the early days of the North American Plan, we used to have fun. [I] assume you’re still having fun, whether you’re retired or with the Joint Ventures. But, let’s think a little bit about: how did you first get involved with the North American Plan; when did you hear about it; how did you get involved; who hired you; and what did you do your first day on
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the job? Start with … since, I guess, Paul, you were the earliest Joint Venture, let’s go ahead and start with you again.
Paul Hartman -- Well, my roots have a pretty long history, preceded way before the Joint Venture started in 1986. I started my career with the Small Wetlands Program in North Dakota; moved on to Minneapolis in that same position. In 1973, when the Service reorganized, I was transferred to the Denver Regional Office, which is a new Regional Office at the time, and became the Assistant Chief of Realty. Just happened that my very first position there in Jamestown, gentleman by the name of Marv Plenert was the Ascertainment Biologist. And so I got to know Marv pretty well in the four years that I was in Jamestown … fast forward that whole sequence to 1986. Marv … well I subsequently moved on to Regional Office in Minneapolis and Denver … Marv’s position took him to the state of Montana, where I believe he was the wilderness biologist -- setting up new wilderness areas. And the state Director at that time was Frank Dunkle. So fast forward his career to the mid 1980s. He transferred as … to Denver as the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges and Wildlife. And he was … at the same time, politics in Montana changed and Frank Dunkle was moved to Denver as a Special Assistant to the Regional Director. Needless to say, he was a staunch Republican, and I believe that through the assistance of the Assistant Secretary, Nat Reed, is how he became … he received the political appointment. Well, in 1986, those same cast of characters were in the same place -- namely the Denver Regional Office -- when the North American Plan started. And Marv Plenert and couple of other guys in Regional Office that ended up going to Washington, subsequent to the signing of the bill, Sam Marler and Marv Dunkan, were … we were all close hunting and fishing buddies, and we would spend hours, and couple of times a week maybe, having a beer before we all went home. And then in 1986, when the North American Plan first hit the streets, there were … we’d have a lot of informal discussions about ‘well, how’s this plan ever going to work? We’re going to get the states involved managing waterfowl and a habitat basis.’ And there was a lot of skepticism about how that all was all going to work. And I distinctly remember several of us saying ‘it ain’t going to work. I mean, there’s no way that the state is going to follow our lead in this kind of a program.’ And we already had trouble, at least in our Region, with some of the states -- North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana – some … you know, more difficult dealings with them along the lines of waterfowl regulations, and flyway interactions, and so forth. So it was … we were all pretty skeptical that this was going to happen. And again, I can remember saying ‘boy, that’s a job I wouldn’t want.’ [Various chuckling.] Well, it wasn’t too much longer after that that Marv Plenert came into my office and he said ‘Hartman, so what do you think, how would you like to have this job?’ And I said ‘Marv, that’s a no win situation, I mean, that’s going to be really a tough …’ ‘yeah, but you’ve got the background with the Wetlands Program, and you already know the staff people at the state level that you work with.’ Because in our Small Wetlands Program, every state governor had to approve our land acquisitions on a case by case basis. So there were weekly, or not weekly, but monthly presentation to the governor and his staff on tracts that we wanted them to approve. And there was a lot of politics involved in getting that all done. And over the years we’d developed a pretty good relationship, and a system that worked. For instance, if there was one tract that we absolutely had to get approved that month, and we knew the
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governor was only going to approve one out of the five that we gave him, we made sure that the staff knew which one that was. We had a pretty good working relationship. And so, first, in my current job at the time, it was … my concern was that this new person, whoever it was going to be, working with the North American, with the same people that I was working with at the state level … so there’s was a lot of possibilities of things that just wouldn’t, you know, things could get screwed up pretty easily. So, more I thought about it … more I thought about it ‘ahh, you know, rather than jeopardize a good program that’s already off and running, maybe this is a job that I should take, make sure that there’s continuity from one program over into this new program called the North American.’ Finally I … I consented. And Marv Plenert … if they’re going to blame somebody, he’s the guy to blame. ‘Cause he’s the one that hired me.
?? Whispered – Me too.
Bob Streeter in a whisper – First day on the job.
Bob Streeter -- What was your first day on the job like, Paul?
Paul Hartman -- First day on the job. Well, as we all know, that North American came of a lot of written words, but there wasn’t any money that came with it. And the first challenges were to iron out what other existing programs were going to pay for my salary, a secretary, office space, all that kind of stuff. So we … obviously, we had to move … I had to move my position, from [my] current desk to another desk. The first activities that I can remember, and I don’t know Bob, you probably had a lot to do with this, is to get on the ground, at the states, and start talking to them about the North American Plan. Needless to say, there was a lot of mistrust – skepticism - on their part. There weren’t very many of them and our … the states that I was dealing with were North and South Dakota, and Montana, which were Region 6 states, at the time. And then Minnesota also was part of our Joint Venture. And Minnesota, and Iowa, and the Regional Office staff, at that point, had, you know, they were their states, but Region 6 pretty much had the lead. And that caused some complications I think initially -- didn’t last long. But there were some evils that we had to work with, both at the state level, and the … little sparring to see how the Region, at the management level - top management level – were going to work together. And so, like I say, it didn’t take us, in our Joint Venture, very long before personalities began to mesh and really work well together. But my first job was to get out on the ground at the states and try to get them on-board. And that was a major challenge, because of the past history, and, you know, with other activities that we dealt with on with the state level. So that was [one of] the very first challenges I guess.
Bob Streeter -- Charlie …
Charles Baxter -- Well, I guess before the Joint Venture was formally established, there was a lot of activity in late 1987, two or three coordination meetings involving what would eventually be the primary partners -- the states, and Ducks Unlimited, and the Service. And we were basically focused on trying to divvy up some of the acquisition
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goals and objectives that were in the ‘86 plan. Divvy them up in terms of how much of this three hundred and some odd thousand acres of acquisition was going be in Arkansas versus Louisiana, etcetera, etcetera. And I was involved in that as a Project Leader for the Ecological Services Field Office in Mississippi. And had a lot of opinions on the directions that I thought the North American was wanting to take us. And that year, I guess the year after … the week after Christmas, Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson invited me into Atlanta. And I’ll never forget their words, and I think this is pretty much verbatim, and it came from Jim Pulliam, he was then the Regional Director, Benson was the Chief of Refuges for the Southeast Region, and Jim said ‘we don’t know what a Joint Venture is, and we don’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator is, but we want you to figure it out.’ And like a dummy I said okay. And so, on January the 17th 1988 I became Joint Venture Coordinator. It dawned on me while I was just sitting here a minute ago, today is January 17th, so this is my 18th anniversary as Joint Venture Coordinator. And do you really want to know about the first day on the job? That was a question to you, Bob.
Bob Streeter -- Absolutely. The first day, the first week, the first set of activities that …
Charles Baxter -- Well, …
Bob Streeter -- What’d you do first, other than find a desk and a telephone?
Charles Baxter -- I don’t … I don’t remember the first day on the job. I suspect it was a lonely day. Because I had gone from being the Project Leader of the oldest Ecological Services Field Office in the United States of America, with a staff and well defined roles and responsibilities, to being a staff of one -- and with no help and no idea. [Various chuckling.] And so it was … I’m quite sure the first day was a somewhat lost and lonely day. I don’t remember all the details, but I suspect it was much as Paul was describing. It was starting the coordination and the interaction. And fortunately, in the form of those two guys I mentioned previously -- Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson -- they were honest when they said they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was and they didn’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator was. And that honesty translated into them being pretty darn flexible, and supportive, in trying to figure out, you know, which way we were going.
Bob Streeter -- Well, Jerry, you were the first Joint Venture Coordinator for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture. Can you share some of those same type of thoughts? And how you came down with this?
Jerry Johnson – Yeah, I can. I can remember seeing the Joint Venture, the North American Plan, that original Plan that came out - the draft. And some … the Public Affairs had put out some news releases about the North American, and I remember looking at those and saying ‘you know, that looks like it’d be an interesting position, but I’d never, never would get … have a chance to get involved in a program like that.’ And since I was … I felt like the Ecological Services Field Supervisor -- same position that Charlie was -- that probably wouldn’t receive a lot of consideration, because I always knew the waterfowl and migratory bird bunch -- very close knit group of people. And I
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thought well, although I knew several of them, but anyway, I just let it go by. And I was in Austin, attending a Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting, and I got a call from the Regional Office, from Ellis [indecipherable] who was the ARD for Refuges and Wildlife. [He] said ‘would you want to consider taking on the job of the Joint Venture, as the Joint Venture Coordinator?’ And I said ‘well, I’d think about it.’ And he said ‘well, you need to get to Jackson, Mississippi,’ I believe it was the Southeastern was going on at the time ‘and meet with Regional Director Mike Spear and I, and we’ll discuss it.’ And I said ‘okay.’ So I headed back. I was on my way on a deer hunt following the Commission meeting, and I had a bunch of stuff in the car from some other people. So I had to meet them and unload their gear. Head back to Arlington. And I got my plane, and the next day I went to Jackson. And there, in a hotel room, they asked me if I would be interested and I said ‘well, I’d sure like to consider this.’ They said ‘well, you got today … until tomorrow to make up your mind.’ And, at that meeting, there was a North American meeting going on, and it was the people … the Canadians were there presenting the Quill Lakes Project. And I remember spending quite a bit of time talking to Ross Mellonchuck about what was going on in Canada, and that intrigued me. Of course, I’ve always been a waterfowl nut anyway -- all my life, dyed in the wool duck hunter. And of course, that’s different than being in the programs, but …. Then Harvey was there, Harvey Nelson, and I think Charlie and I both sat down at that meeting with Harvey Nelson and discussed the, you know, what everybody kind of knew about the North American at that time, at least from Harvey’s perspective. And then I told those two gentlemen, Ellis and the Regional Director Spear, that I’d take the job. And not knowing what I’d got myself into, same as Charlie. ‘Cause I was the Project Leader for Ecological Services in Arlington, Texas. So, I went back home. And, of course, since I was in the field position, the people in the Region … and Ellis [indecipherable] was a very good friend of mine, had been … he’d been the Area Manager when they still had the Area Manager System, he was my supervisor at that time, and … but they took care of me, as far as getting my initial funding from the Region. And I guess they stole it from this program or that to get everything going. And that’s how I got started in the North American as a Joint Venture Coordinator.
Charles Baxter -- Allow me one anecdote. Jerry, that was a … it was a Waterfowl Winter Symposium …
Jerry Johnson -- Oh, okay.
Charles Baxter -- As I recall, and I remember … I mean, that was a big deal. And I remember you and I sitting there together as ES Field Supervisors in that audience, and my recollection there was two or three hundred people there, and who knows, maybe there was only a hundred there, and somebody stood up on the podium and gave this big spiel about the North American and introduced two new Joint Venture Coordinators -- that being you and I. And I kind of tightened up.
[Various chuckling]
Jerry Johnson -- Well I’m an old guy. I couldn’t remember the details.
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Charles Baxter -- I remember that.
Jerry Johnson -- It was a long time ago.
Bob Streeter -- Okay. Well, you younger guys, Dave and then Carey why don’t you give us your call on this.
Carey Smith -- Okay. I started the Service in 1978. I was a Flyway Biologist, that’s a Pilot / Biologist position, and gave me an opportunity to fly the Flyways from the Yukon to the Yucatan, and get a good feel for the waterfowl resource in North America. And I also served on several of the tech committees and worked closely with the Flyway for five or six years. And after that, a position came open as the Region Refuge Biologist, and that seemed pretty exciting. You’re working with everything from big horns to butterflies, and Hawaii and Idaho, and a lot of diversity. And really enjoyed working with those folks. And did that for about seven or eight years. And one day, it was Marv Plenert again, and Marv of course had experience with the North American. He moved to Region 1 as our Regional Director, and showed up there. And we were wintering, you know, hundreds of thousands of geese, and wondering why we didn’t have a Joint Venture. So he and Art Martell, who was the Regional Director for the West (I think they call it) -- British Columbia and Yukon -- got their heads together in early 1990 and started to hatch this plan -- we would have an international Joint Venture. And I hadn’t paid much attention to it, I was busy with refuges. And I was at Jackson and saw that presentation. And thought ‘hum, North American, that’s a really great idea.’ But never really thought about it much before or after that. My supervisor I knew, Dick Bower, was working on a prospectus to do it under Marv’s supervision. And I know he was doing some tours with the Canadians, and he was kind of excited about this program. But I still hadn’t paid a whole bunch of attention to it. Until one day, Marv had me in his office and suggested that I be the Joint Venture Coordinator. Well, Marv suggests things, but he’s not really suggesting.
*He’s very persuasive.
Carey Smith -- Yeah. He was polite enough to give me the weekend to think about it, but I knew it really wasn’t a choice. I was going to be the next Joint Venture Coordinator, one way or another. So I went in there and [air quotes] volunteered [air quotes], even though I was very comfortable in the job I had and enjoyed it a lot. Well, that was a … as it turns out, that was a great decision, ‘cause this has been just a fabulous run of 16 years. As far as how we got started, my first day -- it was probably putting together the partners. We had a meeting on January … I think it was January 9th 1991, our first meeting in Washington -- Bellingham, Washington. And the players … I think my first day I was probably getting a hold of the states. And my job was probably a little easier than yours, ‘cause the North American had been around for a couple of years, and I don’t think the states thought it was it was a federal takeover at that point. [Various chuckling.] They had seen that good things were happening around the country. And they were really pretty eager to get on-board. So that wasn’t a problem. And we also go a hold of some of
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the key NGOs, like Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and folks like that. The thing I remember most about that meeting was the Regional Director for The Nature Conservancy was sitting right next to the Regional Director for the Trust for Public Lands, and he turned and told everybody that this guy really shouldn’t be on the Board. And that was the only conflict I think we’ve ever had in 16 years of the Joint Venture. I remember Marv just looking at the two them and said ‘Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Great start.’ [Various chuckling.] But, as it turns out, they were both on the Board. And as it turns out -- for a while. And as it turns out, the TNC guy was right -- the TPL guy didn’t last very long. But, I think that’s the most memorable thing about that meeting. I think you guys paved the way, in just two years, and made things a whole lot easier for the next Joint Ventures coming on, because there was no fear factor at all. And the NGOs knew that this was a source of more projects. And the states weren’t threatened at all. So, just two years later, I think I had a lot easier thing putting this thing together than Charles, and Jerry, and Paul did.
Bob Streeter -- David …
Dave Paullin -- My beginnings with the North American Waterfowl Management Plan began with a phone call from Larry Debates, who was the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges in Portland, in Region 1. I was at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, at that time. And was fat, dumb, and happy out there. [Various chuckling.] Had a good job. Had no interest in moving, whatsoever. And was perfectly content doing what I was doing out there. And, so, Larry called me out of the clear blue, I had no … you know he’d never called me before in my life, I don’t think, and …
?? -- That should [indecipherable] a warning. [Various chuckling.]
Dave Paullin – Yeah, that was a warning. And he said ‘Dave,’ says ‘I think you’d make a good Joint Venture Coordinator, and I’d like you to consider going to Sacramento, California, to head up the Central Valley Joint Venture for the North American Plan.’ And I said ‘Larry,’ I said ‘I got to tell you,’ I said ‘I was born and raised in Sacramento.’ I said ‘I went to high school there.’ And I says ‘Sacramento is the last place in the world I ever want to go back to.’ I said ‘California is a good place to be from.’ I says ‘I’m not going back to California for anything.’ And … even though I had two brothers, a sister, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and cousins that live there, but I just said ‘there’s no way in the world I’ll ever go back to California.’ And … so the telephone conversation was winding down, and, I guess, to be the polite person that I am, I said ‘well Larry, since you called and it’s your dime’ I says ‘why don’t you just tell me about this job anyway.’ And that was my mistake. I should have never said that. [Various chuckling.] But, he went on and described this job. And at the end of that conversation I thought ‘well, gee, that doesn’t sound so bad.’ So that night I went home and I told my wife about the phone call, and I said ‘you know,’ I said ‘there just can’t be a job that’s that good.’ I said ‘this has just got to be … this is too good to be true.’ So, I started a lot of investigation. I knew a lot of the people that were going to be involved in this, and so I called them, and I said ‘what’s your understanding of this North American Plan stuff, and the Joint Venture, and what are you guys doing.’ And so, I spent a good amount of time sort of
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investigating this whole thing. ‘Cause I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being sold a bill of goods. And so, against my initial feelings, I said I would. So I went back to Sacramento. But I told my wife ‘well, we’ll only be there, like, three or four years, and then we’ll go on and do something else.’ As it turned out, I was there 16 years -- nine years as a Joint Venture Coordinator, and then the six years after that I supervised the Central Valley Joint Venture Coordinator that came after me. So, my first day on the job I remember they flew me down from Oregon to Sacramento for a Joint Venture Management Board meeting. So the Management Board was already sort of starting to meet and jell. And my predecessor, Gary Cramer, was an interim Joint Venture Coordinator for the first year. And so Gary was getting some things going. So I flew down to Sacramento for a Management Board meeting, and so they introduced me as sort of the new kid on the block. And so, that was a pretty memorable day. And then I, as Charles was speaking, I thought of an anecdote, that was early in my career, that was somewhat humorous. But … he was talking about moving from an old, established Ecological Services Office, to an office of one. And I remember, early in my career as a Joint Venture Coordinator, the Service was going through this big exercise where they required all the Project Leaders to send in org charts. And org charts were, you know, wiring diagrams. [Various chuckling.] We had the Project Leader at the top, and Branch Chiefs, and Division Chiefs, and, you know, all the munchkins down below. And so I, as a Project Leader, was required to send one of those in. So I sent my org chart in. And it was one box, right in the middle of a piece of paper, and said “Dave Paullin / Joint Venture Coordinator.” And I sent that in. And that’s all there was, was just my name in a box. Anyway, that was the beginning. There was a staff of zero -- just me.
Charles Baxter -- Okay. So, Realty, Flyway Biologist, refuge person, ES person, ES person -- it seemed the only thing we had in common was we were pretty darn gullible.
Dave Paullin – Didn’t know how to say no.
Bob Streeter – But, I think that there might be some other things in common. You all were self starters. You knew a lot of people. You had a burning desire to work for the resource. And David, you already said that the Management Board was there. Let’s go to the other four and … how did you get your Management Boards started; how did you pick them; how did you first have the meeting; who … you know, how did that all come about? Did you just fall into it, or did it … was it very carefully thought out? Did you have advice from other people? Kind of go through that. And again, since the earliest one was the Prairie Potholes Joint Venture, Paul, let’s start with you again.
Paul Hartman -- Well, as best I can recollect is that a lot of it was in place, to some extent. It was obvious that the Management Board would consist of the state Directors, or their designees, in each of the states. Region 3 had, as I remember, Dick Hoppe [or Hopper?] from … or Dick Bishop from Iowa and Roger Holmes from Minnesota. They each had a staff person that I worked more directly with on a daily basis. In North Dakota it was kind of the same scenario. It was Dale Henniger in North Dakota. George van Dell, I believe his name was, in South Dakota. And for the life of me, I can’t remember who the guy was in Montana. But there … so there was some logical things
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that …I mean, obviously, we had … the Joint Venture was going through the state agencies. They were going to be a primary mover and shaker, if you will, of getting this work done, because without their direct involvement, and their serious input, and our, you know, from the Service’s standpoint, more listening than directing traffic at that point, it wasn’t going to happen. Because the states simply were not going to allow it to happen. I can remember Dale Henniger from North Dakota, at one of my very earliest meetings with him, telling me [shaking finger very agitatedly] ‘were sick and tired of the Fish & Wildlife telling us, in North Dakota, how to manage waterfowl. If were going to buy into this, were going to have a major say in how it’s going to be done.’ And that attitude, at least from my perspective, was very acceptable. Because it … negotiating for land all my life, in my career up ‘till that point, that’s the only way you make deals. Is if there’s a win / win situation. So, I think the people that we got involved initially, and incidentally, there was Ducks Unlimited -- there was Bob Meeks, as I recall, from Ducks Unlimited, that we … had an office there in Bismarck, at the time. And I think still does. And Keith Harmon with Wildlife Management Institute. They were the two NGOs that came on-board very early on in the years that I was working with the program. So it was kind of a logical progression of characters that came to, you know, came to the table all at once. Everybody had common interests. And one of the things that we learned really early on was that we all had the same goals in common. Yeah, we had different, you know, our respective agencies, our job [air quotes] titles [air quotes], if you will, were a little different, but we came to grips real quick with the idea that this is going to be a win / win program for everybody, for all entities, you know, if we just sat down and set aside certain things that happened in the past and got on with doing business, so …. The first meetings that we had were just pretty much the state Directors for the game and fish agencies, or their designees, and most of them had -- not all of them -- but most of them had waterfowl backgrounds, so ….
Bob Streeter -- Charlie …
Charles Baxter -- As I recall, our formative or initial Management Board meeting was sometime in the spring of ’88. I’m pretty sure it was at the North American Conference, in March. It was in South Carolina, ‘cause, you know, I think that’s where the North American was. In terms of who was going to be on the Management Board, in our part of the world that was … it was a pretty simple issue in that, you know, the deep South is not a land of NGOs, and public land trusts, and it’s not near as rich in that sort of environment as, say California would be, or Florida would be, or the Pacific Northwest. And so you know it was the normal players. It was the state wildlife agencies, it was Ducks Unlimited. I think TNC was there. It was the Fish & Wildlife Service. And probably, as a new Coordinator, and one that … that say, unlike Carey, I had no grounding in the culture of wildlife conservation. You know, I didn’t know Flyway people, and that sort of thing. But we had some folks that were real leaders, in the form of Kim Babcock -- at point in time still at Missouri; Hugh Bateman from Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries; Steve Wilson from Arkansas Game and Fish. Steve Wilson was one of the, I think, the original members of the North American Wetlands Conservation Council. And then of course, Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson -- and especially Harold. I’d have died and went to heaven at an early age, it hadn’t of been for Harold Benson, I
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suspect. And those guys were committed. And they didn’t, you know, they were like Pulliam, they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was and what a Joint Venture Coordinator was, and that sort of thing. But I think they were committed to being one. And so we had some good strong leadership. And as a naïve Joint Venture Coordinator coming from that fight the Corps of Engineers world, which I knew how to do very well, they benefited me a lot.
Bob Streeter -- Jerry …
Jerry Johnson – Yeah. I can’t remember … I guess when we started … after taking on the job as the Coordinator, of course we started with a lot of correspondence. The Regional Office -- Regional Director of course -- sent letters out to the states and everybody that would possibly become involved. I remember drafting those letters. We had an organizational meeting for the Joint Venture, and it was hosted by Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries out at Rockefeller Refuge, down on the coast. Which was a very neat facility. It was fairly well isolated. And Bob, I think you’ll remember, ‘cause you were there, but that was our organizational meeting, and the place was absolutely packed. And they had facilities to stay overnight and they fed you there. It was much like this facility here. And I remember the organizational meeting, where there were a lot of questions were asked, but I think everybody there was very enthusiastic about getting this thing started. And of course, that was my introduction to all the people within the Joint Venture. And I suppose they all wondered ‘I wonder who this guy is?’ Because most of them had never seen or heard of me before, outside of the state of Texas. But, I think they probably sensed my enthusiasm for the job, and probably my sincerity in that particular resource issue that we were getting involved in. And that’s the way we got started. From there we did select the Management Board, and of course, it was representative of all the states, both Regions, and because I had Regions … both the same Region Charlie’s from and then my Region – Albuquerque. But, Hugh Bateman was the first President of our Management Board. And, I guess, if it wasn’t for Hugh Bateman I don’t know what I … I become very good friends with that man. He was a very good leader. And he just had a way of working with people, and getting to the issues. And had a way of not letting things become divisive. He seemed to understand things very well. And he was a great help to me, and kind of led me along as I got started. So, I have to say that Hugh Bateman was good. And I also would say that, Charlie mentioned Harold Benson, his … I guess, was your boss at the time, he was a great help to me too. And of course, he had an interest because half of my Joint Venture was in his Region. But nonetheless, Harold was a great help to me, and support. And so I was grateful for that. and my boss, who was Ellis [indecipherable], when I started … he retired within a few weeks after I got going, and I guess things went a little downhill after that. But, I think the problem was that everybody expected money -- especially the Service. And so they were very well excited about getting this thing started, I hope because of resource issues and something that would be positive for the resource. But also, I’m sure a lot of driving force behind this big support at the start was because they figured there was going to be some money there to help push things along and, you know, Regions like to thrive on money. And when that didn’t come, you know, a lot of the interest at that level, at least for me, kind of dwindled a little bit. But the state people,
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and the other people on my Management Board, kept it going. And I think we did a pretty good job of maintaining the interest. And we had quite a few NGOs. We had the Audubon Society. We had some corporate sponsors that were on our Management Board -- representatives from those. So, we were quite well represented. And we had a lot of people that were willing to step up to the plate and contribute to the Joint Venture.
Bob Streeter -- Carey, how ‘bout your Joint Venture. You were involved in the beginning of it, so …
Carey Smith -- Yeah, uh huh. And I think we learned from the previous Joint Ventures, and we knew, of course, the states were going to be big players. And they were added to the Management Boards, either Directors or their representatives. And I think our first NGOs were, as I mentioned before, Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy. But, with the evolution of the Joint Venture, that Management Board changed from year to year. A few years in, we added Hawaii and Alaska. So, we had their Directors. And then we wented [389] all birds. And then Audubon came on board. So the President of Alaska Audubon, Stan Center, became a Board member. And it didn’t take us long to realize we really couldn’t separate habitat issues, in the Pacific Northwest, from fisheries issues. And sometimes those were … we were … fisheries folks were benificials; other times they were kind of obstructionist. ‘Cause estuarine habitats are really important to the fisheries, that’s were the anadromous fish go from fresh water physiology to salt water physiology. And these areas were getting, you know, developed for harbors, and aquaculture, and this type of thing. So, we realized right away that an awful lot of the funding available to fisheries is great match money for us. So, from time to time, we got one fisheries organization after another, but we had a hard time keeping them engaged. And it was hard to find a fisheries organization that was not regulatory, and covered all the states. And we’re still struggling to get just the right fit there. Another thing, the Pacific Northwest, as Charles mentioned, we do have a lot of friends other than land trust groups. We work with about 35 different land trusts. And they’re really the delivery mechanism for the Joint Venture. Those folks, working with the states, really get the job done. We don’t have much of an NRCS presence, and our private lands program is by name alone, in the Pacific Northwest, with a few exceptions. So, we added the Land Trust Alliance to our Joint Venture, as well. And they’ve been a tremendous help to us. So our Board started out like everybody else’s, but we evolved and [indecipherable] pulling in people that we thought would continue to help us out in the Joint Ventures. Land trusts especially -- they’ve just been terrific. I think last year, Pacific Coast Joint Venture put in for 28 NAWCA, or Coastal, grants. And about 25 of those were either written by land trusts, or they were major players in them. So, they’ve just brought millions of dollars of local government, foundation, and private individual money that hadn’t been available to us before we really got involved with those groups.
Bob Streeter -- What it seems as though a pattern has come through here is that first of all, for the most part, Joint Venture Coordinators were given tremendous flexibility to do whatever you thought you had to do, and very little direction, if any, from your Regions. Exception of maybe one Region, you had tremendous support from the Fish & Wildlife Service. That the partners that came to the table -- the state were preeminent. Ducks
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Unlimited. TNC. And then the Joint Venture was kind of open to anybody else that wanted to come in and willing to contribute. So it seemed like an open ended thing. And if you disagree with that, why, speak out. Otherwise, I think I’d like to go to a kind of another topic. But, would you generally agree with that summary?
*Definitely.
*Yeah.
Bob Streeter -- Okay. North American projects on the ground were doing things in habitat. How did you get your first projects on the ground? Were they already going and you just kind of adapted it to the North American Plan, or were they ones that were … because you brought these partners together -- they all brought resources to start new projects? Paul …
Paul Hartman -- Well, without a doubt, in our … in Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, [as] I mentioned earlier, the precursor to that was the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program. And one of the first important things that was stressed in our Region, and I’m assuming in every other Region, was the fact that we need to start showing results very quickly. So, we had ongoing Small Wetland Acquisition at the time. The [indecipherable] was in … which was an easement refuge initially, we had plans on the table to purchase some additional lands with migratory bird dollars, to expand that particular project, to provide more upland nesting habitat. That became one of our first … what we called ‘Flagship Projects’ in North Dakota. In South Dakota, Lake Thompson, which was … well, lets see, Type 5 wetland in its earlier life, received a lot of drainage from surrounding lands, and weather conditions, and so forth. Began to [indecipherable] wetland area began to grow, and inundate, surrounding private farmlands, and whatnot. Local folks are very excited about doing something in terms of getting relief. And one of the options that the North American provided, initially, was really a project that was recommended -- highly recommended -- by the state representatives on our Management Board. That we could do some conservation easements and detail acquisition on that, to try to help land owners get out from underneath a long term flooding situation. So, those are two projects that had their genesis perhaps under the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program; were quickly folded over into the North American as ‘Flagship Projects’, so that we could show some quick and immediate results. You know, for reporting back to Congress in an effort to get some specific funding for the North American projects, so …
Bob Streeter -- So that started out with, basically, reallocating existing monies from acquisition Fish & Wildlife Service and I guess the state put some … had some money to put into acquisition, because of the flooding issue. Ducks Unlimited came onboard on that one. Did other partners join in and bring money into that Lake Thompson Project, and [indecipherable]?
Paul Hartman -- Yes. Very definitely.
Bob Streeter -- Carey, how ‘bout you, in the Pacific Northwest, when you got started?
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Carey Smith -- Well, we … when we started, we were working with the Canadians, and we adopted their terminology. We identified some “First Step” areas. And those “First Step” areas included the Vancouver, B.C., estuarine areas; the Comox Valley, which is just north of Vancouver on Vancouver Island … or just north of Victoria on Vancouver Island -- big, swan depredation problems they had there. And then on the US side, Northern Puget Sound, Port Susan Bay, Skagit Bay areas, where we had, at that time, 40,000 Wrangle Island Snow Geese wintering, and tremendous swan populations. Might not be maybe, compared some areas in Charles’ areas, but a lot of snow geese for our part of the world. So we identified those areas for acquisition. And over the first few years, our first NAWCA grants and Coastal grants were all pretty much in that area. And I think we’ve acquired all of Port Susan Bay -- 7,000 acres. Now we’re working on getting easements on some of the ag areas around that, so we can make sure those geese are still there. And we also, I think, picked up all of Skagit Bay, all of Samish Bay. And the Comox area, they’ve done some programs with private citizens groups, protecting … the big push in that area of Vancouver was golf courses. These wetland areas, they thought, made great golf courses. And also there [was a] huge dispute over [a] third runway at the Vancouver airport there. And they worked out compromises through the Joint Venture on that. They also picked up huge pieces of land from the Trust. They were government lands, but they weren’t identified as wildlife lands. And working with Ducks Unlimited and their constituents, they picked up tens of thousands of acres in those bays. So, “First Step” areas were right there, in those estuaries in the north. And we made some real progress, really quickly. And I think it really got us … identified us as players throughout the rest of the Joint Venture, by making those first acquisitions.
Bob Streeter -- How ‘bout the other Joint Ventures? Charlie?
Charles Baxter -- I guess most of the initial activity fell in one, or both, of two areas. One was acquisition. Of course, we didn’t have that good stable source of funding that Paul alluded to. But, at that point in time, there was quite a bit of political support for acquisition in the Mississippi alluvial valley. And so there were projects that we were able to get going in nearly every state. But then the other area was in the realm of private lands. I mean, I felt very strongly that the North American Plan was pointing us toward private lands. We didn’t have private lands programs. And so the issue was -- how do we develop private lands programs, targeted at waterfowl, and recognizing that it was going to have to be targeted at the agricultural land owners. And there was much time and effort spent doing … working on that. We would not have been successful without leadership -- Ducks Unlimited, specifically Dave Wesley, Curtis Hopkins. Sometimes we forget that, at that point in time, in the South, it was no small amount of risk involved in DU devoting resources on the wintering grounds, and on private lands. And that was not heard of at that point in time. And so there was some guys that took some risks within their own organizations, and created some good private lands programs, in … particularly there in the Mississippi alluvial valley, in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. So that’s kind of where our earliest, on the ground, habitat type work was focused.
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And our Joint Venture too, it wasn’t … you know, nobody had new money, to start with. So, a lot of what people brought to the table were expertise, bulldozers, you know, aside from land acquisition, we did like you did I think, Charles, we identified a lot of stuff. If this thing was really going to succeed, and reach waterfowl objectives, the key is on private land. Agencies couldn’t buy enough land to support the waterfowl numbers that we were looking at in the North American Plan. So, we … it was pretty obvious right from the get-go that the key was whatever happens on private land. And wetland restoration became a real early on initiative, that, I think, in our Joint Venture [indecipherable] wetland restoration, not only on existing state and federal lands, where we maybe didn’t have the money to do things right away ourself, but on private lands too. And that’s where the NGOs came, you know, like Ducks Unlimited, came forward with engineering capabilities; a lot of the technical know how about how to restore wetlands; getting state permits; you know, interceding on behalf of the project, to do some of the leg work that was necessary to get those kind of projects off the ground. So it was more than just money that was used early on. We did a lot of smart things I think early on too, even with a lack of money, you know, and there were a lot of good things that happened in our Joint Venture right from the beginning, that were happening on the ground, in terms of habitat restoration and habitat protection.
Jerry Johnson -- I think in ours, one of the first things we had to do in the Gulf was change our boundaries. We weren’t given a boundary, but we wanted to extend it into the coastal prairies, so we could cover the rice prairies. And so, we did that. And we had a project that was, initially it was called the Chenier Plain Project, became one of our initiative areas. We established six different Initiative Areas in the Gulf Coast. And in anticipation of the North American they had already started the Chenier Plain Project, which was a marsh restoration, and some acquisition. Choking up here
Get you a swig of water.
I think our early experiences with habitat, we called them ‘Flagship Projects’ too, generally it was tagging onto something that had already been in the works for quite some time. So, one of our ‘Flagship Projects’ was the Cosumnes River Preserve just south of Sacramento. It was an acquisition started by The Nature Conservancy, then Ducks Unlimited got involved. And it was a relatively small acquisition for some riparian forest along the Cosumnes River with some adjacent pasture land that was part of an old dairy. And I think the original acquisition was probably something less than 1000 acres. and now that area’s over 20,000 acres of secured land. And the partnership has grown from two, to probably, eight different entities that have invested in the Cosumnes River Preserve, and let that … see that grow over time. So it was always … the early days, it was really sort of tagging onto something that had already been in the works for some time.
Jerry, did that Chenier Plain Project, is that what transformed into what you’ all call the Texas Prairie Wetlands?
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Jerry Johnson -- No. No. The Chenier Plain, that was an initial project, because half of it was in Louisiana and half in Texas. That way we got started off with two states on a project. It had been pre-selected. But … I think we ended up … most of the … of course in the coastal areas, most of it was salt water intrusions [and] subsidence problems, that we were having. And so, we started out with … on the far eastern part with Mobile Bay, which was a bottomland hardwoods area, mostly controlled by Scott Paper Company. And they became a partner. And that was administered by one of our ES people over in Mobile. And then we had the Mississippi Wetlands Initiative Area; and then the Mississippi River Coastal Wetlands in Louisiana; Chenier plain; and we had Texas Mid-Coast; and we had the Laguna Madre. And a lot of the projects that first came up were kind of like yours -- they were already entailed in something that was ongoing. And a lot of it had to do with Corps of Engineers, because they’re the ones that had the expertise, and the ability, and were working in the area of these marches. So, also there were some ongoing mitigation efforts with water development; and navigation projects, that they hoped to develop into the … into our Initiative Areas, and to make good projects out of those with marsh restoration. So, we started working in the rice prairies, and then, of course, in the coastal marshes. And either … we tried to work in the areas of, of course, protection / restoration and acquisition. And I think we ended up with about 75 projects by the end of about … after the first three years.
Bob Streeter -- So, we’ve had maybe, a total of about 70 years or so of experience, sitting around the table here. If you were to think about the successes, and maybe the obstacles, and roll that all into just a couple of suggestions for any Joint Ventures that would be starting, or people that would be starting new Joint Venture, whether it’s for the North American or for other types of species Joint Ventures, what one or two things would you want to make that Joint Venture Coordinator … what kind of advice would you want to give him so that … give him a leg up on their programs? Just jump in and kind of talk among yourselves on that. We’ve got about five minutes here.
Well, I think one of the first things that I’d do if I was, you know, setting one up from scratch, knowing what I know now, is when you for the Management Board, try to make sure that you really get people that have the interest, and have the ability, and maybe within the organization, or whatever, to get something accomplished. And that would provide the support. Because the support is one of the most important things. Whether it be state, or federal, or your non-government agencies, of which we had support. but when we had our initiatives, we had initiative chairpersons, and they all ended up being Fish & Wildlife Service people because … part of the problem was, because of the money issue, everything that was accomplished in the Joint Venture was in addition to what everybody’s job was in the first place. So, when your dealing with a program that requires people to put in a lot of effort, but it’s all in addition to what they’re already, you know, programmed to do, that makes it very difficult. And it didn’t take long before we started to have problems with people who were starting to really show concern, and were griping about the fact that … were they working for their … the refuge people -- were they working for refuges or were they working for the Joint Venture Coordinator. And that’s what it came down to. And those issues had to be resolved.
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Bob Streeter -- Go ahead.
Well, I think when the smoke all settles, and at the end of the day, the thing that really counts, are not so much [indecipherable] as Coordinators, in my case, my individual technical skills that became important, it was my people skills. And, I think that if I were to give advice to any future Joint Venture Coordinator [it] is, initially, when you’re first starting organizing the people that you’re going to work with, kind of leave your technical skills at the door, and rely on your personal skills. Because it’s people that get work done. The technical part of it, because of who we are, come into play intuitively as we go through the process, but how we get it done is a people issue. And getting the best out of everybody as a facilitator, and that’s kind of what I think … what I looked at a Joint Venture Coordinators main job is, is to facilitate and get people to working together. And I guess my advice would be simply to use your best people skills to get in that direction. The technical stuff eventually takes place all on its own. Takes care of itself.
I guess one of the … some of the advice that I have given new Joint Venture Coordinators in the past, and this probably going to sound somewhat strange, and sometimes it takes them back, is to draw a clear distinction between two categories of partners. And what I’m fixing to say, you know, I got to caveat it by saying -- this is diverse country, and Washington state’s different from Louisiana, and South Dakota’s different from Alabama, and etcetera, etcetera. And, you know, we all have to deal with those, and work within those, very real differences within our country. But what I mean by two categories of partners -- there was a lot of impetus early on in the Joint Venture to get as many people to the table as you could. And I saw many times when that didn’t work, in my part of world. Didn’t work with the Corps. Didn’t work with EPA. you couldn’t keep them there, for vary and sundry reasons. And I thought many times, you know, about why is that. And that’s where I came up with this two categories of partners. And in category one there’s a group of partners that we have mutual interests, that’s generally pretty place specific and time specific. And those mutual interests can be with people that are very diverse with us -- range districts, irrigation districts, the Corps, EPA, local municipality, etcetera, etcetera. And we need to enter into partnerships, as necessary, you know, with those folks, to get those mutual interests fulfilled. But in terms of sustaining a Joint Venture over the long run, that other category of partners are those partners that by virtue of legislative authority or organizational mission, they share the burden for implementing the plan. And they share it just as real … that their burden for plan implementation is just as real as the Fish & Wildlife Service’s burden. And those are the people that I really want on the Management Board. I want somebody that’s there because they feel a burden for implementing this plan. And it’s a … so we’ve got those partners that our missions bring us together, and should keep us together over a long period of time, versus other partners that we have a mutual interest ….
End of Tape #3, Side A
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Start of Tape #3, Side B
…pretty place specific, pretty time specific. Pursue that mutual interest, but, you know, don’t think that you’ve got to have everybody and there dog on a Management Board. Because it, at least in out part of the world, it did not … it did not work.
Bob Streeter – Dave, do you have one word of wisdom?
Dave Paullin -- I think I would share Paul’s perspective about people skills. And I know when I was recruited for that job and looked at the position description, and like others have said today, you know our superiors really didn’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator was; they didn’t know how to go about doing it; they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was. So they didn’t know what the appropriate skill set was. So, was it technical? So, in my case, you know, I was looked at as sort of a waterfowl biologist type. And so, you know, they thought that’s probably what was needed. But also, you know, they looked at people who had realty skills, and I, you know, I knew a little bit about realty, but I wasn’t a realtor, per se. But really, you know, as I got into it, and sort of made it happen, the technical skills sort of went to the side, because there’s a lot more people out there that know a lot more about waterfowl and wetlands than I do. But, it was really the people skills that were the driver, and moving those things through a project, or whatever it was, a partnership, it was the finessing of people that was the critical element there for success.
Bob Streeter -- Jerry …
Jerry Johnson -- I think the real strength of the North American is the Joint Ventures ability to do what they need to do to make things work in their area. There’s really no sideboards put on by the committee. Although, a few times, some of the folks back in D.C. are saying ‘well, all these Joint Ventures are doing all different things, they’re spending their money different ways, there should be more standardization.’ Well, we tell them, time after time, that our strength is a lack of standardization. I’ll tell the new Joint Venture Coordinators to take a look and see what the other Joint Ventures are doing, but figure out what works for their area. And make sure that we continue to have the freedom to do that. Make sure you lobby the council saying ‘this is the way it’s worked, this is why it’s worked, we don’t need any oversight.’ And another small thing is, I think it’s an advantage sometimes to start the Joint Venture with no funding, because then you know who the real partners are. I tell the newer Joint Ventures that aren’t funded yet, I tell them ‘this is the best years, ‘cause this is where you find out who the players are.’ When we first started we had no funding for quite a few years, and we decided we needed state steering coordinators, committee coordinators; and our Oregon coordinator -- his salary was paid for by BOR, Forest Service, partly Fish & Wildlife Service; his office was donated by the Defenders of Wildlife; his contract was handled by Ducks Unlimited. So, having no funding seems like a terrible burden, but later you need the funding. But it’s nice to start out lean and mean and see who the players really are.
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Bob Streeter -- Well, gentlemen, we’ve pretty much run out of our time line. I think that you’ve done a great job of explaining the types of things that went into the early Joint Ventures. And the bottom line that comes through is it’s what you did as Joint Venture Coordinators, with all your partners, that made the North American work. It sure seems like, for those of you that retired, this may have been kind of a pretty good career -- since you spent probably, at least half, except for Paul, half your life actually being a Joint Venture Coordinator in the Fish & Wildlife Service. So, big ‘thank you’ goes to you for what you’ve done, and what you continue to do.
Thank you
Thank you
Well, that didn’t hurt.
Most challenging and the most frustrating, all at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah.
Stay in the chairs.
Stay in the chairs.
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John Cornely -- Good morning. This is John Cornely and I’m here today with Harvey Nelson, [in a] continuation of our conversations about the history of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. And Harvey [has] participated in the last session and again on a panel in this session. So, were not going to try and recover … plow old ground again, Harvey, but there’s just a few things that we want to follow up on with you, about your days as the Executive Director of the North American Plan in the US Office in Minneapolis, especially. And some things that we’ve touched on, but we haven’t really discussed very much. And the first of those I’d like you to talk a little bit more about is the Implementation Board, or Committee. And I think we talked a little bit about, maybe, who was on that. But if you’d go over your recollection of who was on it, and kind of the role they played in helping get the Plan rolling.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, we knew early on as we started to form the overall organizational structure for the whole North American program that we needed as much help as we could get from the conservation organizations, the NGOs across the country. And that became even more important at the Washington level when we began to deal with the Congressional Committees about funding and other support. So, at that time there was a natural resource council … Natural Resources Council formed at the Washington level for which each major NGO had a representative or two. So, we got well acquainted with al those folks in the initial organization process, in the early days of the program. And out of that we decided that it would be probably a good stroke of business if we could convince about 12 / 14 or so - 15 - of the major organizations that were interested in the North American program to come together in some kind of a committee, or something, that would enable them to spend more direct time on our kinds of problems, in the early implementation phase. So, we talked about that. And the upshot of it all was that we established what we called the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Implementation Board. And the first Chairman of that was Matt Conley -- he was in the Executive Vice-President for Ducks Unlimited -- and he was assisted by Larry Youn -- who was the Vice-President of the Wildlife Management Institute. And very quickly, I’d say within the first 30 days, we had about 15 members from some of the key national conservation organizations, and related government agencies, ranging all the way from the Soil Conservation Service, at that time, to the Forest Service, to the Bureau of Land Management, to the Corps of Engineers. Anybody that had anything to do with habitat out there on the landscape throughout the country. Because there were certain elements of their programs that were very important to the North American Plan, in terms of habitat protection, or preservation, or development. Or to shift the emphasis on development to things that would be more beneficial to the waterfowl program, or the wetland program. So, that was the upshot of how that all came to be.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- But it was a very effective tool I think at that time. And those people and their own staffs, most of them all had their own legislative liaison officers that worked with the Congress, you know, on a daily basis practically. So, we had a direct route, direct pipeline so to speak, to many, many staff people, and key Congressional
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member’s offices that we didn’t have before that time. Would have taken a long time to have built that, so it was a good quick way of establishing that kind of relationship.
John Cornely -- Okay. And it sounds like they had a kind of a dual role where the liaison, and maybe in some cases, a little lobbying of Congress, but also probably, educating and promoting within their individual organizations and agencies support for the plan? Is that correct?
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, that’s very true. And also most of these organizations, and even the agencies, they all had their regional offices, or state offices, or some kind of a network across the country. And they were able to plug into that directly. So, not only were we getting support at the Washington level, but also from the field, back up through the grassroots, so to speak, to the, you know, through the political as well as the resource lines.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- So it was very helpful.
John Cornely -- Let’s also talk some more about the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Committee, which was separate from the Implementation Board, and part of the Plan itself. And talk again about kind of the composition of that and that was US and Canada and what their role was in the initial days of getting the plan up and running.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, it became apparent, even in the early days of drafting the Plan, what kind of oversight should be provided to help guide this whole program -- especially during its early years. And that Plan did provide for the establishment of a North American Plan Committee, so to speak, to do that -- provide that function. But, I think early on, it was very essential that we had that group in place. And that’s one reason it was formed pretty early in the game. And the Plan itself specified what that membership should be, in terms of representation between US and Canada, and state and federal agencies, and the NGOs, and that type of thing. So we quickly established that. Because we needed that kind of support. But it also provided a forum for the major participants in the plan -- in both US and Canada -- to come to the table together and begin to understand, you know, what was needed to really launch an effective program quickly at that stage. And, it also provided I think, a sense of security to the … say like the Flyway Councils, to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies representing the 50 states, and Canadian groups as well. They began to feel, right away then, that they had a forum they could come to, to have a better understanding of what their role should be. And it wasn’t something that the federal agencies, or some small group, was trying to shove down their throat, in terms of participation. They made their own choices. And I would say after about the second year there was a strong desire for state organizations, game and fish departments, other NGOs, federal agencies, to become a member of the Plan Committee. And I think that’s continued. I think its function has changed as the years have gone on, obviously. But, see I left the program when I retired in ’92, but even
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at that stage, from my perspective, the North American Plan Committee preformed a real, essential role in providing the oversight that was needed at that stage to … for … not only … send the message back down through the administrative channels and the political channels, but to provide a forum that people could come to if they saw there were problems developing, or they had new suggestions, in terms of how the plan should function, in both countries.
John Cornely -- Okay. Talk a little bit more about the dynamics and the relationships of you and your staff with the Plan Committee, with the … would the Plan Committee come to you and ask for some recommendations, or ask you … you and your staff to do some staff work, and bring recommendations? Did they … or did they come to you and say, you know, I think you ought to consider facilitation certain things, or developing guidelines? Just how did that relationship work?
Harvey Nelson -- Well, my first relationship to them was when they were first formed, when the full program was just being launched. And at that stage, they were more interested in learning about progress -- you know, are the Joint Ventures now being organized, and when will they be in place. And … but probably more importantly, when can we start seeing some results? And of course that was the tough part of it. That’s one reason we had the Flagship Projects, and the priority areas by Joint Venture. And those did serve a real purpose, as you’ve already heard from others. But, as the program was launched, and as the Joint Ventures came into being and became operational, and more work was being done on the ground, then there were increasing concerns about, you know, are we doing the right things in the right places? Is the information flow current? Do we really understand what’s going on out there right now? If not, then lets … people … we people that were involved, need to correct that or improve it. So there was, I think, an early and constant emphasis on communications. Which was good. But then, as the whole program became more complicated, and more activities took place, the money started to flow, then there were more questions like -- are we sure that what we’re doing, in terms of priorities and expenditure of funds, is being put in the right place? Are we using the best scientific information available to guide this program? If not, what do you need? And that got into the area where they came then to us to identify new needs, new support. And of course, over the years, that’s been reflected in the different kinds of committees that they’ve established; the emphasis, like, the new … the whole biological foundation of the Plan, that concept developed. And, over the years, it’s changed, I think, depending upon the nature of the program, and the kinds of confrontations, or the kind’s challenges that have arisen, in different parts of the country -- US and Canada. It was also the main forum for the US interests, and the Canadian interests, at the higher level, at the administrative levels, in those countries, to come together and talk about the same things. Which they didn’t … they probably did once or twice a year, but with the new Plan Committee in place, that gave an opportunity to do that more frequently.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- And they met more frequently the first couple of years.
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John Cornely -- Okay. Another area I’d like to explore with you is a little bit of a follow up on an earlier panel we had this morning. We had some of the original Joint Venture Coordinators in a panel discussion, and they talked a little bit about how they came to be hired. And I know that you went around the country, within the Fish & Wildlife Service especially, and talked to most - if not all - the Regional Directors to see how you could identify folks, and get some of these Joint … original Joint Ventures started. I’d like you to talk to us a little bit about your recollection of some of those meetings, and what you were trying to accomplish, and how that all worked.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, you can imagine, with any new program, initially there was a just a lot of concern. First of all -- what’s it really all about? And we had to have a way to explain that, you know, rather fairly simple and clearly, and not in too much detail, as you would try to explain something new. Secondly, there was a lot of concern about -- what is a Joint Venture? Within the Fish & Wildlife Service, they had never really worked in that arena before. They had done a little work in partnerships, but when the basic principles of the North American Plan and its implementation process were geared to Joint Ventures and partnerships, that sort of brought new focus on this whole combination of this effort. So, then also, when the first Joint Ventures were established, the Regions involved, you know, they had to quickly decide how they were going to structure their Joint Venture. So, they were concerned about what kind of Coordinators … what are the criteria for a person that would be a Joint Venture Coordinator, because they had their own ideas as to who was right there with them, at the time, that might be just quickly transferred over. And that’s what happened with a good many of them. So, there were a lot of questions of that type. Of course, at that stage you know, I was a Regional Director, and we had periodic Directorate meetings. So, the whole North American Plan program and implementation aspect, became major points of discussion at Directorate meetings. Well, because of that, and because of the kinds of questions that were arising, I made a special effort, the first two to three years of the program, as things evolved, to go visit every Regional Director. Sat down in their office with them, with their appropriate Assistant Regional Directors that were to be involved, with the migratory bird or regional migratory bird coordinators, and other such people, and the realty folks that were working with wetland acquisition, and such programs -- and really had a detailed discussion about questions they had concerning the overall program. Questions about Joint Ventures, the Coordinators, how they’d function, who managed them, who they were responsible to. There was a lot of internal concern about -- who’s running this show. And kind of a fine line to tread, but …. So, I recognized that, and we made this special effort, and even after Bob came on staff … then he helped with that as well. But we made all these initial trips, to every Regional Office, to have a similar discussion. So everybody got the same message. And then as the Joint Ventures came onboard, and became active, then we had an additional series of visits with the Regional staffs, in terms of -- how things are going; where’re they at; what kind of other help or support do they need; are there any other internal conflicts, or program differences, that we should know about, that we might be able to help with, or help alleviate. And it sort of became more of an open family discussion, so to speak, at that point then, because we’d built a level of trust, I think, at that point, that -- at least we tried to -- so they’d have some faith in … and they understood what the role of the North American Office was in
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the US -- and the Canadian folks went through somewhat the same gyrations. But, I think that was an essential effort. And we had to do it with a bit of caution at first. Because, in the final analysis, the Regional Directors were responsible for the activity of those Joint Ventures in their Regions, and that was part of their job. And they’d been told, by the Director previous to that, that this is a high priority on your agenda, and we want to see you give all the possible support you can. And of course, in the initial years, that meant reprogramming some money, reassigning people. And … but, as others have said, there was just a lot of interest, and faith, in getting this program developed right, and getting it launched, getting it implemented, and getting the Joint Ventures underway on the ground. ‘Cause that’s where the end product was going to be, as far as waterfowl resource and wetlands were concerned. And this also, then, was reflected in how the different Regions went about helping establish, in coordination with the Joint Venture Coordinators, the Joint Venture Management Boards. Because, as you’ve already heard, that was another integral, very essential part, of this whole organizational structure. Because these Joint Venture Management Boards, in the final analysis, became the group that made the decisions as to what the priorities were within that Joint Venture -- state by state. And also, latter, the funding levels required. And of course, again, the cross-section of people that became Board members also had a lot of influence on how the different levels of support were developed state by state.
John Cornely -- Well, thank you Harvey. That, I think, fills in very nicely some of the small gaps that we had to fill. And, as always, I appreciate your time, and being a mentor to virtually all of us that have been involved in the North American Plan and migratory bird.
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, I appreciate that John. I’d just like to say one other thing if I could …
John Cornely -- Okay, sure.
Harvey Nelson -- It sort of goes back to how the whole concept was developed. And I was fortunate … you know, I was the Director of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center at the time we started talking about these things. And Jim Patterson was the Director of the Prairie Migratory Bird Research Center in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And, as a result, Jim Patterson and I had a lot of other mutual interests, and discussions about the research programs. But that subsequently led into this whole business about the formation of the National Waterfowl Management Plans that were developed, we talked about earlier. And then of course, Jim wound up going to Ottawa, and I would up going to Washington, and we continued to have this relationship. And when we got into this discussion about -- well, what’s the status of these National Waterfowl Plans? They don’t seem to really be going anywhere, or accomplishing what they thought they would. he and I thought … we had great faith in that … John Rogers with the Migratory Bird Program, at the time. And that’s what all sort of led to the formation of this Program Review Committee. Jim and I said ‘we got to get more people involved, from each agency that’s dealing with this part of the resource, at the highest level.’ And we set about to do that. so the Program Review Committee became a major vehicle, major
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forum, between the two federal agencies, to address all these problems. And out of that, of course, arose the whole concept of ‘we need an umbrella program, an umbrella Plan’ that became the North American Waterfowl Plan. So, my hat’s off to Jim, God rest his soul.
John Cornely -- Okay, all right.
Harvey Nelson -- There’s just one thing we haven’t talked about …
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- … at any of these meetings, I don’t believe, is the logo.
John Cornely -- Well, let’s talk about the logo.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, I won’t take too long.
John Cornely -- It’s right here.
Harvey Nelson -- Here it is. And Bob Streeter knows the origin of this. Jim McCuag does. And of course, I got to know Jim pretty well …
John Cornely -- Another representation here.
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, all right. Anyway … and Jim McCuag is aware of some of this history too, because when he succeeded Patterson [indecipherable] but anyway, early on in the program, one of the consulting firms that we worked with, and we worked with some different groups, matter of fact David Case and Associates -- that’s now [a] nationally, well recognized group -- had some of their first assignments with this … one of his first projects was to do an analysis of the North American Plan, and its organization and implementation. But, anyway, out of that came the immediate decision that ‘one thing you guys have got to do right … fast, is establish recognition. And you need a logo, that’ll help do that.’ And we thought, ‘well, like what, you want more ducks and geese on a plaque or something or …’ ‘No it[’s] got to be something different than that.’ And, in the Minneapolis area, there were a number of design companies and whatnot, that were … had some reputation for doing those things. So, we made contact with the firm, and the individual that did the initial logo for the John Deer Corporation, you know, the deer in the green field and the fence and all that, and sat down and talked with him, and he said ‘you’re right on target.’ He says ‘you guys need … you should have had your recognition in place already, you’re not going to get much farther unless you can do that quickly.’ So, he says, ‘tell me what you think a good logo would be.’ And we talked about the normal things that we think about in the wildlife field. And he said ‘no, it’s got to be something simple, something eye-catching, and it’s got to represent the objectives of your program.’ And he said ‘here you’ve got a program between two countries, and so,’ he said ‘I’ll think about that.’ ‘Bout two days later, he called up and said ‘come on down, I got an idea.’ He says ‘here you got this waterfowl
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program, basically a waterfowl / wetland program, with Canada.’ He says ‘wetlands are kind of hard to put in a logo’ but he says ‘you can do a lot with birds.’ And that’s when he said ‘what do you think about putting a flying bird, and it … ones tilted upside down to the other?’ And it … the whole theory was that this represents touching wings -- a co-operation between two parties -- between two countries in this case. And that became the logo.
John Cornely -- What was this gentleman’s name … from the John Deer Corporation?
Harvey Nelson -- Right off … I’d have to go look in the records. I don’t remember his name specifically, but we should get that.
John Cornely -- We need to record that in the record. But that … thank you very much … that, you know, I don’t know why we … that hasn’t come up sooner, but now we’ve got it down. And so ….
Harvey Nelson -- And Jim McCaug and I took this to a meeting, just prior to a North American Plan Committee, I think it was in Washington. And we said ‘well, before we try it on the Committee, let’s try it on our wives.’ And they said ‘gee, that sounds great, you know, why even go to the Committee?’ But we did.
John Cornely -- Okay. Good. All right. Thank you very much, again, Harvey.
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NAWMP January 17, 2007
Panel Discussion
Tape #3, Side A
*I’m Bob Streeter, retired Fish & Wildlife Service, and we’re here at the National Conservation Training Center on January 17th 2007. About 21 years ago the North American Waterfowl Management Plan was signed. It’s an international agreement to restore waterfowl populations to the levels that we’d seen in [the] past. The way that was done was through Joint Ventures in Canada [and the] United States. Today were fortunate enough to have representatives of the Joint Ventures in the United States, to describe some of the early activities in their Joint Ventures; how they got started; what their problems were; what their opportunities were; and the different way of organizing at those Joint Ventures. And so I’d like to have this panel introduce themselves. We have five, from five of the Joint Ventures in [the] United States, and have them say who they are; where they are now; when they started with the Joint Venture; and then we’ll go on to some other questions. So, let’s start with -- Paul, you were our first Joint Venture Coordinator in the Prairie Potholes.
*My name is Paul Hartman. As Bob indicated, I was the first Prairie Pothole Joint Venture Coordinator. And I served in that position from 1987 to 1989. [I] subsequently retired from the Fish & Wildlife Service in 1995.
*My name is Carey Smith. I was the Pacific Coast Joint Venture Coordinator, starting with the beginning of the Joint Venture in 1990. And I’ve continued to be the Joint Venture [Coordinator] through 2006.
*I’m Dave Paullin. I was the Joint Venture Coordinator in the Central Valley of California from 1989 to 1998. [I’m] currently retired from Fish & Wildlife Service, living in Sheridan, Wyoming.
*I’m Jerry Johnson. I was the Joint Venture Coordinator for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture. [I] started out with the beginning. I was the Coordinator through 1993, and then I retired from the Fish & Wildlife Service.
*And I’m Charles Baxter. I’m the Joint Venture Coordinator for the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture. I was the first coordinator in January 1988, and am still, and currently, the Coordinator for the Lower Miss. Joint Venture.
Bob Streeter -- Well, that was a pretty serious series of responses. I can remember back in the early days of the North American Plan, we used to have fun. [I] assume you’re still having fun, whether you’re retired or with the Joint Ventures. But, let’s think a little bit about: how did you first get involved with the North American Plan; when did you hear about it; how did you get involved; who hired you; and what did you do your first day on
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the job? Start with … since, I guess, Paul, you were the earliest Joint Venture, let’s go ahead and start with you again.
Paul Hartman -- Well, my roots have a pretty long history, preceded way before the Joint Venture started in 1986. I started my career with the Small Wetlands Program in North Dakota; moved on to Minneapolis in that same position. In 1973, when the Service reorganized, I was transferred to the Denver Regional Office, which is a new Regional Office at the time, and became the Assistant Chief of Realty. Just happened that my very first position there in Jamestown, gentleman by the name of Marv Plenert was the Ascertainment Biologist. And so I got to know Marv pretty well in the four years that I was in Jamestown … fast forward that whole sequence to 1986. Marv … well I subsequently moved on to Regional Office in Minneapolis and Denver … Marv’s position took him to the state of Montana, where I believe he was the wilderness biologist -- setting up new wilderness areas. And the state Director at that time was Frank Dunkle. So fast forward his career to the mid 1980s. He transferred as … to Denver as the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges and Wildlife. And he was … at the same time, politics in Montana changed and Frank Dunkle was moved to Denver as a Special Assistant to the Regional Director. Needless to say, he was a staunch Republican, and I believe that through the assistance of the Assistant Secretary, Nat Reed, is how he became … he received the political appointment. Well, in 1986, those same cast of characters were in the same place -- namely the Denver Regional Office -- when the North American Plan started. And Marv Plenert and couple of other guys in Regional Office that ended up going to Washington, subsequent to the signing of the bill, Sam Marler and Marv Dunkan, were … we were all close hunting and fishing buddies, and we would spend hours, and couple of times a week maybe, having a beer before we all went home. And then in 1986, when the North American Plan first hit the streets, there were … we’d have a lot of informal discussions about ‘well, how’s this plan ever going to work? We’re going to get the states involved managing waterfowl and a habitat basis.’ And there was a lot of skepticism about how that all was all going to work. And I distinctly remember several of us saying ‘it ain’t going to work. I mean, there’s no way that the state is going to follow our lead in this kind of a program.’ And we already had trouble, at least in our Region, with some of the states -- North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana – some … you know, more difficult dealings with them along the lines of waterfowl regulations, and flyway interactions, and so forth. So it was … we were all pretty skeptical that this was going to happen. And again, I can remember saying ‘boy, that’s a job I wouldn’t want.’ [Various chuckling.] Well, it wasn’t too much longer after that that Marv Plenert came into my office and he said ‘Hartman, so what do you think, how would you like to have this job?’ And I said ‘Marv, that’s a no win situation, I mean, that’s going to be really a tough …’ ‘yeah, but you’ve got the background with the Wetlands Program, and you already know the staff people at the state level that you work with.’ Because in our Small Wetlands Program, every state governor had to approve our land acquisitions on a case by case basis. So there were weekly, or not weekly, but monthly presentation to the governor and his staff on tracts that we wanted them to approve. And there was a lot of politics involved in getting that all done. And over the years we’d developed a pretty good relationship, and a system that worked. For instance, if there was one tract that we absolutely had to get approved that month, and we knew the
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governor was only going to approve one out of the five that we gave him, we made sure that the staff knew which one that was. We had a pretty good working relationship. And so, first, in my current job at the time, it was … my concern was that this new person, whoever it was going to be, working with the North American, with the same people that I was working with at the state level … so there’s was a lot of possibilities of things that just wouldn’t, you know, things could get screwed up pretty easily. So, more I thought about it … more I thought about it ‘ahh, you know, rather than jeopardize a good program that’s already off and running, maybe this is a job that I should take, make sure that there’s continuity from one program over into this new program called the North American.’ Finally I … I consented. And Marv Plenert … if they’re going to blame somebody, he’s the guy to blame. ‘Cause he’s the one that hired me.
?? Whispered – Me too.
Bob Streeter in a whisper – First day on the job.
Bob Streeter -- What was your first day on the job like, Paul?
Paul Hartman -- First day on the job. Well, as we all know, that North American came of a lot of written words, but there wasn’t any money that came with it. And the first challenges were to iron out what other existing programs were going to pay for my salary, a secretary, office space, all that kind of stuff. So we … obviously, we had to move … I had to move my position, from [my] current desk to another desk. The first activities that I can remember, and I don’t know Bob, you probably had a lot to do with this, is to get on the ground, at the states, and start talking to them about the North American Plan. Needless to say, there was a lot of mistrust – skepticism - on their part. There weren’t very many of them and our … the states that I was dealing with were North and South Dakota, and Montana, which were Region 6 states, at the time. And then Minnesota also was part of our Joint Venture. And Minnesota, and Iowa, and the Regional Office staff, at that point, had, you know, they were their states, but Region 6 pretty much had the lead. And that caused some complications I think initially -- didn’t last long. But there were some evils that we had to work with, both at the state level, and the … little sparring to see how the Region, at the management level - top management level – were going to work together. And so, like I say, it didn’t take us, in our Joint Venture, very long before personalities began to mesh and really work well together. But my first job was to get out on the ground at the states and try to get them on-board. And that was a major challenge, because of the past history, and, you know, with other activities that we dealt with on with the state level. So that was [one of] the very first challenges I guess.
Bob Streeter -- Charlie …
Charles Baxter -- Well, I guess before the Joint Venture was formally established, there was a lot of activity in late 1987, two or three coordination meetings involving what would eventually be the primary partners -- the states, and Ducks Unlimited, and the Service. And we were basically focused on trying to divvy up some of the acquisition
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goals and objectives that were in the ‘86 plan. Divvy them up in terms of how much of this three hundred and some odd thousand acres of acquisition was going be in Arkansas versus Louisiana, etcetera, etcetera. And I was involved in that as a Project Leader for the Ecological Services Field Office in Mississippi. And had a lot of opinions on the directions that I thought the North American was wanting to take us. And that year, I guess the year after … the week after Christmas, Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson invited me into Atlanta. And I’ll never forget their words, and I think this is pretty much verbatim, and it came from Jim Pulliam, he was then the Regional Director, Benson was the Chief of Refuges for the Southeast Region, and Jim said ‘we don’t know what a Joint Venture is, and we don’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator is, but we want you to figure it out.’ And like a dummy I said okay. And so, on January the 17th 1988 I became Joint Venture Coordinator. It dawned on me while I was just sitting here a minute ago, today is January 17th, so this is my 18th anniversary as Joint Venture Coordinator. And do you really want to know about the first day on the job? That was a question to you, Bob.
Bob Streeter -- Absolutely. The first day, the first week, the first set of activities that …
Charles Baxter -- Well, …
Bob Streeter -- What’d you do first, other than find a desk and a telephone?
Charles Baxter -- I don’t … I don’t remember the first day on the job. I suspect it was a lonely day. Because I had gone from being the Project Leader of the oldest Ecological Services Field Office in the United States of America, with a staff and well defined roles and responsibilities, to being a staff of one -- and with no help and no idea. [Various chuckling.] And so it was … I’m quite sure the first day was a somewhat lost and lonely day. I don’t remember all the details, but I suspect it was much as Paul was describing. It was starting the coordination and the interaction. And fortunately, in the form of those two guys I mentioned previously -- Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson -- they were honest when they said they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was and they didn’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator was. And that honesty translated into them being pretty darn flexible, and supportive, in trying to figure out, you know, which way we were going.
Bob Streeter -- Well, Jerry, you were the first Joint Venture Coordinator for the Gulf Coast Joint Venture. Can you share some of those same type of thoughts? And how you came down with this?
Jerry Johnson – Yeah, I can. I can remember seeing the Joint Venture, the North American Plan, that original Plan that came out - the draft. And some … the Public Affairs had put out some news releases about the North American, and I remember looking at those and saying ‘you know, that looks like it’d be an interesting position, but I’d never, never would get … have a chance to get involved in a program like that.’ And since I was … I felt like the Ecological Services Field Supervisor -- same position that Charlie was -- that probably wouldn’t receive a lot of consideration, because I always knew the waterfowl and migratory bird bunch -- very close knit group of people. And I
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thought well, although I knew several of them, but anyway, I just let it go by. And I was in Austin, attending a Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting, and I got a call from the Regional Office, from Ellis [indecipherable] who was the ARD for Refuges and Wildlife. [He] said ‘would you want to consider taking on the job of the Joint Venture, as the Joint Venture Coordinator?’ And I said ‘well, I’d think about it.’ And he said ‘well, you need to get to Jackson, Mississippi,’ I believe it was the Southeastern was going on at the time ‘and meet with Regional Director Mike Spear and I, and we’ll discuss it.’ And I said ‘okay.’ So I headed back. I was on my way on a deer hunt following the Commission meeting, and I had a bunch of stuff in the car from some other people. So I had to meet them and unload their gear. Head back to Arlington. And I got my plane, and the next day I went to Jackson. And there, in a hotel room, they asked me if I would be interested and I said ‘well, I’d sure like to consider this.’ They said ‘well, you got today … until tomorrow to make up your mind.’ And, at that meeting, there was a North American meeting going on, and it was the people … the Canadians were there presenting the Quill Lakes Project. And I remember spending quite a bit of time talking to Ross Mellonchuck about what was going on in Canada, and that intrigued me. Of course, I’ve always been a waterfowl nut anyway -- all my life, dyed in the wool duck hunter. And of course, that’s different than being in the programs, but …. Then Harvey was there, Harvey Nelson, and I think Charlie and I both sat down at that meeting with Harvey Nelson and discussed the, you know, what everybody kind of knew about the North American at that time, at least from Harvey’s perspective. And then I told those two gentlemen, Ellis and the Regional Director Spear, that I’d take the job. And not knowing what I’d got myself into, same as Charlie. ‘Cause I was the Project Leader for Ecological Services in Arlington, Texas. So, I went back home. And, of course, since I was in the field position, the people in the Region … and Ellis [indecipherable] was a very good friend of mine, had been … he’d been the Area Manager when they still had the Area Manager System, he was my supervisor at that time, and … but they took care of me, as far as getting my initial funding from the Region. And I guess they stole it from this program or that to get everything going. And that’s how I got started in the North American as a Joint Venture Coordinator.
Charles Baxter -- Allow me one anecdote. Jerry, that was a … it was a Waterfowl Winter Symposium …
Jerry Johnson -- Oh, okay.
Charles Baxter -- As I recall, and I remember … I mean, that was a big deal. And I remember you and I sitting there together as ES Field Supervisors in that audience, and my recollection there was two or three hundred people there, and who knows, maybe there was only a hundred there, and somebody stood up on the podium and gave this big spiel about the North American and introduced two new Joint Venture Coordinators -- that being you and I. And I kind of tightened up.
[Various chuckling]
Jerry Johnson -- Well I’m an old guy. I couldn’t remember the details.
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Charles Baxter -- I remember that.
Jerry Johnson -- It was a long time ago.
Bob Streeter -- Okay. Well, you younger guys, Dave and then Carey why don’t you give us your call on this.
Carey Smith -- Okay. I started the Service in 1978. I was a Flyway Biologist, that’s a Pilot / Biologist position, and gave me an opportunity to fly the Flyways from the Yukon to the Yucatan, and get a good feel for the waterfowl resource in North America. And I also served on several of the tech committees and worked closely with the Flyway for five or six years. And after that, a position came open as the Region Refuge Biologist, and that seemed pretty exciting. You’re working with everything from big horns to butterflies, and Hawaii and Idaho, and a lot of diversity. And really enjoyed working with those folks. And did that for about seven or eight years. And one day, it was Marv Plenert again, and Marv of course had experience with the North American. He moved to Region 1 as our Regional Director, and showed up there. And we were wintering, you know, hundreds of thousands of geese, and wondering why we didn’t have a Joint Venture. So he and Art Martell, who was the Regional Director for the West (I think they call it) -- British Columbia and Yukon -- got their heads together in early 1990 and started to hatch this plan -- we would have an international Joint Venture. And I hadn’t paid much attention to it, I was busy with refuges. And I was at Jackson and saw that presentation. And thought ‘hum, North American, that’s a really great idea.’ But never really thought about it much before or after that. My supervisor I knew, Dick Bower, was working on a prospectus to do it under Marv’s supervision. And I know he was doing some tours with the Canadians, and he was kind of excited about this program. But I still hadn’t paid a whole bunch of attention to it. Until one day, Marv had me in his office and suggested that I be the Joint Venture Coordinator. Well, Marv suggests things, but he’s not really suggesting.
*He’s very persuasive.
Carey Smith -- Yeah. He was polite enough to give me the weekend to think about it, but I knew it really wasn’t a choice. I was going to be the next Joint Venture Coordinator, one way or another. So I went in there and [air quotes] volunteered [air quotes], even though I was very comfortable in the job I had and enjoyed it a lot. Well, that was a … as it turns out, that was a great decision, ‘cause this has been just a fabulous run of 16 years. As far as how we got started, my first day -- it was probably putting together the partners. We had a meeting on January … I think it was January 9th 1991, our first meeting in Washington -- Bellingham, Washington. And the players … I think my first day I was probably getting a hold of the states. And my job was probably a little easier than yours, ‘cause the North American had been around for a couple of years, and I don’t think the states thought it was it was a federal takeover at that point. [Various chuckling.] They had seen that good things were happening around the country. And they were really pretty eager to get on-board. So that wasn’t a problem. And we also go a hold of some of
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the key NGOs, like Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and folks like that. The thing I remember most about that meeting was the Regional Director for The Nature Conservancy was sitting right next to the Regional Director for the Trust for Public Lands, and he turned and told everybody that this guy really shouldn’t be on the Board. And that was the only conflict I think we’ve ever had in 16 years of the Joint Venture. I remember Marv just looking at the two them and said ‘Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Great start.’ [Various chuckling.] But, as it turns out, they were both on the Board. And as it turns out -- for a while. And as it turns out, the TNC guy was right -- the TPL guy didn’t last very long. But, I think that’s the most memorable thing about that meeting. I think you guys paved the way, in just two years, and made things a whole lot easier for the next Joint Ventures coming on, because there was no fear factor at all. And the NGOs knew that this was a source of more projects. And the states weren’t threatened at all. So, just two years later, I think I had a lot easier thing putting this thing together than Charles, and Jerry, and Paul did.
Bob Streeter -- David …
Dave Paullin -- My beginnings with the North American Waterfowl Management Plan began with a phone call from Larry Debates, who was the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges in Portland, in Region 1. I was at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, at that time. And was fat, dumb, and happy out there. [Various chuckling.] Had a good job. Had no interest in moving, whatsoever. And was perfectly content doing what I was doing out there. And, so, Larry called me out of the clear blue, I had no … you know he’d never called me before in my life, I don’t think, and …
?? -- That should [indecipherable] a warning. [Various chuckling.]
Dave Paullin – Yeah, that was a warning. And he said ‘Dave,’ says ‘I think you’d make a good Joint Venture Coordinator, and I’d like you to consider going to Sacramento, California, to head up the Central Valley Joint Venture for the North American Plan.’ And I said ‘Larry,’ I said ‘I got to tell you,’ I said ‘I was born and raised in Sacramento.’ I said ‘I went to high school there.’ And I says ‘Sacramento is the last place in the world I ever want to go back to.’ I said ‘California is a good place to be from.’ I says ‘I’m not going back to California for anything.’ And … even though I had two brothers, a sister, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and cousins that live there, but I just said ‘there’s no way in the world I’ll ever go back to California.’ And … so the telephone conversation was winding down, and, I guess, to be the polite person that I am, I said ‘well Larry, since you called and it’s your dime’ I says ‘why don’t you just tell me about this job anyway.’ And that was my mistake. I should have never said that. [Various chuckling.] But, he went on and described this job. And at the end of that conversation I thought ‘well, gee, that doesn’t sound so bad.’ So that night I went home and I told my wife about the phone call, and I said ‘you know,’ I said ‘there just can’t be a job that’s that good.’ I said ‘this has just got to be … this is too good to be true.’ So, I started a lot of investigation. I knew a lot of the people that were going to be involved in this, and so I called them, and I said ‘what’s your understanding of this North American Plan stuff, and the Joint Venture, and what are you guys doing.’ And so, I spent a good amount of time sort of
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investigating this whole thing. ‘Cause I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being sold a bill of goods. And so, against my initial feelings, I said I would. So I went back to Sacramento. But I told my wife ‘well, we’ll only be there, like, three or four years, and then we’ll go on and do something else.’ As it turned out, I was there 16 years -- nine years as a Joint Venture Coordinator, and then the six years after that I supervised the Central Valley Joint Venture Coordinator that came after me. So, my first day on the job I remember they flew me down from Oregon to Sacramento for a Joint Venture Management Board meeting. So the Management Board was already sort of starting to meet and jell. And my predecessor, Gary Cramer, was an interim Joint Venture Coordinator for the first year. And so Gary was getting some things going. So I flew down to Sacramento for a Management Board meeting, and so they introduced me as sort of the new kid on the block. And so, that was a pretty memorable day. And then I, as Charles was speaking, I thought of an anecdote, that was early in my career, that was somewhat humorous. But … he was talking about moving from an old, established Ecological Services Office, to an office of one. And I remember, early in my career as a Joint Venture Coordinator, the Service was going through this big exercise where they required all the Project Leaders to send in org charts. And org charts were, you know, wiring diagrams. [Various chuckling.] We had the Project Leader at the top, and Branch Chiefs, and Division Chiefs, and, you know, all the munchkins down below. And so I, as a Project Leader, was required to send one of those in. So I sent my org chart in. And it was one box, right in the middle of a piece of paper, and said “Dave Paullin / Joint Venture Coordinator.” And I sent that in. And that’s all there was, was just my name in a box. Anyway, that was the beginning. There was a staff of zero -- just me.
Charles Baxter -- Okay. So, Realty, Flyway Biologist, refuge person, ES person, ES person -- it seemed the only thing we had in common was we were pretty darn gullible.
Dave Paullin – Didn’t know how to say no.
Bob Streeter – But, I think that there might be some other things in common. You all were self starters. You knew a lot of people. You had a burning desire to work for the resource. And David, you already said that the Management Board was there. Let’s go to the other four and … how did you get your Management Boards started; how did you pick them; how did you first have the meeting; who … you know, how did that all come about? Did you just fall into it, or did it … was it very carefully thought out? Did you have advice from other people? Kind of go through that. And again, since the earliest one was the Prairie Potholes Joint Venture, Paul, let’s start with you again.
Paul Hartman -- Well, as best I can recollect is that a lot of it was in place, to some extent. It was obvious that the Management Board would consist of the state Directors, or their designees, in each of the states. Region 3 had, as I remember, Dick Hoppe [or Hopper?] from … or Dick Bishop from Iowa and Roger Holmes from Minnesota. They each had a staff person that I worked more directly with on a daily basis. In North Dakota it was kind of the same scenario. It was Dale Henniger in North Dakota. George van Dell, I believe his name was, in South Dakota. And for the life of me, I can’t remember who the guy was in Montana. But there … so there was some logical things
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that …I mean, obviously, we had … the Joint Venture was going through the state agencies. They were going to be a primary mover and shaker, if you will, of getting this work done, because without their direct involvement, and their serious input, and our, you know, from the Service’s standpoint, more listening than directing traffic at that point, it wasn’t going to happen. Because the states simply were not going to allow it to happen. I can remember Dale Henniger from North Dakota, at one of my very earliest meetings with him, telling me [shaking finger very agitatedly] ‘were sick and tired of the Fish & Wildlife telling us, in North Dakota, how to manage waterfowl. If were going to buy into this, were going to have a major say in how it’s going to be done.’ And that attitude, at least from my perspective, was very acceptable. Because it … negotiating for land all my life, in my career up ‘till that point, that’s the only way you make deals. Is if there’s a win / win situation. So, I think the people that we got involved initially, and incidentally, there was Ducks Unlimited -- there was Bob Meeks, as I recall, from Ducks Unlimited, that we … had an office there in Bismarck, at the time. And I think still does. And Keith Harmon with Wildlife Management Institute. They were the two NGOs that came on-board very early on in the years that I was working with the program. So it was kind of a logical progression of characters that came to, you know, came to the table all at once. Everybody had common interests. And one of the things that we learned really early on was that we all had the same goals in common. Yeah, we had different, you know, our respective agencies, our job [air quotes] titles [air quotes], if you will, were a little different, but we came to grips real quick with the idea that this is going to be a win / win program for everybody, for all entities, you know, if we just sat down and set aside certain things that happened in the past and got on with doing business, so …. The first meetings that we had were just pretty much the state Directors for the game and fish agencies, or their designees, and most of them had -- not all of them -- but most of them had waterfowl backgrounds, so ….
Bob Streeter -- Charlie …
Charles Baxter -- As I recall, our formative or initial Management Board meeting was sometime in the spring of ’88. I’m pretty sure it was at the North American Conference, in March. It was in South Carolina, ‘cause, you know, I think that’s where the North American was. In terms of who was going to be on the Management Board, in our part of the world that was … it was a pretty simple issue in that, you know, the deep South is not a land of NGOs, and public land trusts, and it’s not near as rich in that sort of environment as, say California would be, or Florida would be, or the Pacific Northwest. And so you know it was the normal players. It was the state wildlife agencies, it was Ducks Unlimited. I think TNC was there. It was the Fish & Wildlife Service. And probably, as a new Coordinator, and one that … that say, unlike Carey, I had no grounding in the culture of wildlife conservation. You know, I didn’t know Flyway people, and that sort of thing. But we had some folks that were real leaders, in the form of Kim Babcock -- at point in time still at Missouri; Hugh Bateman from Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries; Steve Wilson from Arkansas Game and Fish. Steve Wilson was one of the, I think, the original members of the North American Wetlands Conservation Council. And then of course, Jim Pulliam and Harold Benson -- and especially Harold. I’d have died and went to heaven at an early age, it hadn’t of been for Harold Benson, I
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suspect. And those guys were committed. And they didn’t, you know, they were like Pulliam, they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was and what a Joint Venture Coordinator was, and that sort of thing. But I think they were committed to being one. And so we had some good strong leadership. And as a naïve Joint Venture Coordinator coming from that fight the Corps of Engineers world, which I knew how to do very well, they benefited me a lot.
Bob Streeter -- Jerry …
Jerry Johnson – Yeah. I can’t remember … I guess when we started … after taking on the job as the Coordinator, of course we started with a lot of correspondence. The Regional Office -- Regional Director of course -- sent letters out to the states and everybody that would possibly become involved. I remember drafting those letters. We had an organizational meeting for the Joint Venture, and it was hosted by Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries out at Rockefeller Refuge, down on the coast. Which was a very neat facility. It was fairly well isolated. And Bob, I think you’ll remember, ‘cause you were there, but that was our organizational meeting, and the place was absolutely packed. And they had facilities to stay overnight and they fed you there. It was much like this facility here. And I remember the organizational meeting, where there were a lot of questions were asked, but I think everybody there was very enthusiastic about getting this thing started. And of course, that was my introduction to all the people within the Joint Venture. And I suppose they all wondered ‘I wonder who this guy is?’ Because most of them had never seen or heard of me before, outside of the state of Texas. But, I think they probably sensed my enthusiasm for the job, and probably my sincerity in that particular resource issue that we were getting involved in. And that’s the way we got started. From there we did select the Management Board, and of course, it was representative of all the states, both Regions, and because I had Regions … both the same Region Charlie’s from and then my Region – Albuquerque. But, Hugh Bateman was the first President of our Management Board. And, I guess, if it wasn’t for Hugh Bateman I don’t know what I … I become very good friends with that man. He was a very good leader. And he just had a way of working with people, and getting to the issues. And had a way of not letting things become divisive. He seemed to understand things very well. And he was a great help to me, and kind of led me along as I got started. So, I have to say that Hugh Bateman was good. And I also would say that, Charlie mentioned Harold Benson, his … I guess, was your boss at the time, he was a great help to me too. And of course, he had an interest because half of my Joint Venture was in his Region. But nonetheless, Harold was a great help to me, and support. And so I was grateful for that. and my boss, who was Ellis [indecipherable], when I started … he retired within a few weeks after I got going, and I guess things went a little downhill after that. But, I think the problem was that everybody expected money -- especially the Service. And so they were very well excited about getting this thing started, I hope because of resource issues and something that would be positive for the resource. But also, I’m sure a lot of driving force behind this big support at the start was because they figured there was going to be some money there to help push things along and, you know, Regions like to thrive on money. And when that didn’t come, you know, a lot of the interest at that level, at least for me, kind of dwindled a little bit. But the state people,
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and the other people on my Management Board, kept it going. And I think we did a pretty good job of maintaining the interest. And we had quite a few NGOs. We had the Audubon Society. We had some corporate sponsors that were on our Management Board -- representatives from those. So, we were quite well represented. And we had a lot of people that were willing to step up to the plate and contribute to the Joint Venture.
Bob Streeter -- Carey, how ‘bout your Joint Venture. You were involved in the beginning of it, so …
Carey Smith -- Yeah, uh huh. And I think we learned from the previous Joint Ventures, and we knew, of course, the states were going to be big players. And they were added to the Management Boards, either Directors or their representatives. And I think our first NGOs were, as I mentioned before, Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy. But, with the evolution of the Joint Venture, that Management Board changed from year to year. A few years in, we added Hawaii and Alaska. So, we had their Directors. And then we wented [389] all birds. And then Audubon came on board. So the President of Alaska Audubon, Stan Center, became a Board member. And it didn’t take us long to realize we really couldn’t separate habitat issues, in the Pacific Northwest, from fisheries issues. And sometimes those were … we were … fisheries folks were benificials; other times they were kind of obstructionist. ‘Cause estuarine habitats are really important to the fisheries, that’s were the anadromous fish go from fresh water physiology to salt water physiology. And these areas were getting, you know, developed for harbors, and aquaculture, and this type of thing. So, we realized right away that an awful lot of the funding available to fisheries is great match money for us. So, from time to time, we got one fisheries organization after another, but we had a hard time keeping them engaged. And it was hard to find a fisheries organization that was not regulatory, and covered all the states. And we’re still struggling to get just the right fit there. Another thing, the Pacific Northwest, as Charles mentioned, we do have a lot of friends other than land trust groups. We work with about 35 different land trusts. And they’re really the delivery mechanism for the Joint Venture. Those folks, working with the states, really get the job done. We don’t have much of an NRCS presence, and our private lands program is by name alone, in the Pacific Northwest, with a few exceptions. So, we added the Land Trust Alliance to our Joint Venture, as well. And they’ve been a tremendous help to us. So our Board started out like everybody else’s, but we evolved and [indecipherable] pulling in people that we thought would continue to help us out in the Joint Ventures. Land trusts especially -- they’ve just been terrific. I think last year, Pacific Coast Joint Venture put in for 28 NAWCA, or Coastal, grants. And about 25 of those were either written by land trusts, or they were major players in them. So, they’ve just brought millions of dollars of local government, foundation, and private individual money that hadn’t been available to us before we really got involved with those groups.
Bob Streeter -- What it seems as though a pattern has come through here is that first of all, for the most part, Joint Venture Coordinators were given tremendous flexibility to do whatever you thought you had to do, and very little direction, if any, from your Regions. Exception of maybe one Region, you had tremendous support from the Fish & Wildlife Service. That the partners that came to the table -- the state were preeminent. Ducks
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Unlimited. TNC. And then the Joint Venture was kind of open to anybody else that wanted to come in and willing to contribute. So it seemed like an open ended thing. And if you disagree with that, why, speak out. Otherwise, I think I’d like to go to a kind of another topic. But, would you generally agree with that summary?
*Definitely.
*Yeah.
Bob Streeter -- Okay. North American projects on the ground were doing things in habitat. How did you get your first projects on the ground? Were they already going and you just kind of adapted it to the North American Plan, or were they ones that were … because you brought these partners together -- they all brought resources to start new projects? Paul …
Paul Hartman -- Well, without a doubt, in our … in Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, [as] I mentioned earlier, the precursor to that was the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program. And one of the first important things that was stressed in our Region, and I’m assuming in every other Region, was the fact that we need to start showing results very quickly. So, we had ongoing Small Wetland Acquisition at the time. The [indecipherable] was in … which was an easement refuge initially, we had plans on the table to purchase some additional lands with migratory bird dollars, to expand that particular project, to provide more upland nesting habitat. That became one of our first … what we called ‘Flagship Projects’ in North Dakota. In South Dakota, Lake Thompson, which was … well, lets see, Type 5 wetland in its earlier life, received a lot of drainage from surrounding lands, and weather conditions, and so forth. Began to [indecipherable] wetland area began to grow, and inundate, surrounding private farmlands, and whatnot. Local folks are very excited about doing something in terms of getting relief. And one of the options that the North American provided, initially, was really a project that was recommended -- highly recommended -- by the state representatives on our Management Board. That we could do some conservation easements and detail acquisition on that, to try to help land owners get out from underneath a long term flooding situation. So, those are two projects that had their genesis perhaps under the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program; were quickly folded over into the North American as ‘Flagship Projects’, so that we could show some quick and immediate results. You know, for reporting back to Congress in an effort to get some specific funding for the North American projects, so …
Bob Streeter -- So that started out with, basically, reallocating existing monies from acquisition Fish & Wildlife Service and I guess the state put some … had some money to put into acquisition, because of the flooding issue. Ducks Unlimited came onboard on that one. Did other partners join in and bring money into that Lake Thompson Project, and [indecipherable]?
Paul Hartman -- Yes. Very definitely.
Bob Streeter -- Carey, how ‘bout you, in the Pacific Northwest, when you got started?
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Carey Smith -- Well, we … when we started, we were working with the Canadians, and we adopted their terminology. We identified some “First Step” areas. And those “First Step” areas included the Vancouver, B.C., estuarine areas; the Comox Valley, which is just north of Vancouver on Vancouver Island … or just north of Victoria on Vancouver Island -- big, swan depredation problems they had there. And then on the US side, Northern Puget Sound, Port Susan Bay, Skagit Bay areas, where we had, at that time, 40,000 Wrangle Island Snow Geese wintering, and tremendous swan populations. Might not be maybe, compared some areas in Charles’ areas, but a lot of snow geese for our part of the world. So we identified those areas for acquisition. And over the first few years, our first NAWCA grants and Coastal grants were all pretty much in that area. And I think we’ve acquired all of Port Susan Bay -- 7,000 acres. Now we’re working on getting easements on some of the ag areas around that, so we can make sure those geese are still there. And we also, I think, picked up all of Skagit Bay, all of Samish Bay. And the Comox area, they’ve done some programs with private citizens groups, protecting … the big push in that area of Vancouver was golf courses. These wetland areas, they thought, made great golf courses. And also there [was a] huge dispute over [a] third runway at the Vancouver airport there. And they worked out compromises through the Joint Venture on that. They also picked up huge pieces of land from the Trust. They were government lands, but they weren’t identified as wildlife lands. And working with Ducks Unlimited and their constituents, they picked up tens of thousands of acres in those bays. So, “First Step” areas were right there, in those estuaries in the north. And we made some real progress, really quickly. And I think it really got us … identified us as players throughout the rest of the Joint Venture, by making those first acquisitions.
Bob Streeter -- How ‘bout the other Joint Ventures? Charlie?
Charles Baxter -- I guess most of the initial activity fell in one, or both, of two areas. One was acquisition. Of course, we didn’t have that good stable source of funding that Paul alluded to. But, at that point in time, there was quite a bit of political support for acquisition in the Mississippi alluvial valley. And so there were projects that we were able to get going in nearly every state. But then the other area was in the realm of private lands. I mean, I felt very strongly that the North American Plan was pointing us toward private lands. We didn’t have private lands programs. And so the issue was -- how do we develop private lands programs, targeted at waterfowl, and recognizing that it was going to have to be targeted at the agricultural land owners. And there was much time and effort spent doing … working on that. We would not have been successful without leadership -- Ducks Unlimited, specifically Dave Wesley, Curtis Hopkins. Sometimes we forget that, at that point in time, in the South, it was no small amount of risk involved in DU devoting resources on the wintering grounds, and on private lands. And that was not heard of at that point in time. And so there was some guys that took some risks within their own organizations, and created some good private lands programs, in … particularly there in the Mississippi alluvial valley, in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. So that’s kind of where our earliest, on the ground, habitat type work was focused.
13
And our Joint Venture too, it wasn’t … you know, nobody had new money, to start with. So, a lot of what people brought to the table were expertise, bulldozers, you know, aside from land acquisition, we did like you did I think, Charles, we identified a lot of stuff. If this thing was really going to succeed, and reach waterfowl objectives, the key is on private land. Agencies couldn’t buy enough land to support the waterfowl numbers that we were looking at in the North American Plan. So, we … it was pretty obvious right from the get-go that the key was whatever happens on private land. And wetland restoration became a real early on initiative, that, I think, in our Joint Venture [indecipherable] wetland restoration, not only on existing state and federal lands, where we maybe didn’t have the money to do things right away ourself, but on private lands too. And that’s where the NGOs came, you know, like Ducks Unlimited, came forward with engineering capabilities; a lot of the technical know how about how to restore wetlands; getting state permits; you know, interceding on behalf of the project, to do some of the leg work that was necessary to get those kind of projects off the ground. So it was more than just money that was used early on. We did a lot of smart things I think early on too, even with a lack of money, you know, and there were a lot of good things that happened in our Joint Venture right from the beginning, that were happening on the ground, in terms of habitat restoration and habitat protection.
Jerry Johnson -- I think in ours, one of the first things we had to do in the Gulf was change our boundaries. We weren’t given a boundary, but we wanted to extend it into the coastal prairies, so we could cover the rice prairies. And so, we did that. And we had a project that was, initially it was called the Chenier Plain Project, became one of our initiative areas. We established six different Initiative Areas in the Gulf Coast. And in anticipation of the North American they had already started the Chenier Plain Project, which was a marsh restoration, and some acquisition. Choking up here
Get you a swig of water.
I think our early experiences with habitat, we called them ‘Flagship Projects’ too, generally it was tagging onto something that had already been in the works for quite some time. So, one of our ‘Flagship Projects’ was the Cosumnes River Preserve just south of Sacramento. It was an acquisition started by The Nature Conservancy, then Ducks Unlimited got involved. And it was a relatively small acquisition for some riparian forest along the Cosumnes River with some adjacent pasture land that was part of an old dairy. And I think the original acquisition was probably something less than 1000 acres. and now that area’s over 20,000 acres of secured land. And the partnership has grown from two, to probably, eight different entities that have invested in the Cosumnes River Preserve, and let that … see that grow over time. So it was always … the early days, it was really sort of tagging onto something that had already been in the works for some time.
Jerry, did that Chenier Plain Project, is that what transformed into what you’ all call the Texas Prairie Wetlands?
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Jerry Johnson -- No. No. The Chenier Plain, that was an initial project, because half of it was in Louisiana and half in Texas. That way we got started off with two states on a project. It had been pre-selected. But … I think we ended up … most of the … of course in the coastal areas, most of it was salt water intrusions [and] subsidence problems, that we were having. And so, we started out with … on the far eastern part with Mobile Bay, which was a bottomland hardwoods area, mostly controlled by Scott Paper Company. And they became a partner. And that was administered by one of our ES people over in Mobile. And then we had the Mississippi Wetlands Initiative Area; and then the Mississippi River Coastal Wetlands in Louisiana; Chenier plain; and we had Texas Mid-Coast; and we had the Laguna Madre. And a lot of the projects that first came up were kind of like yours -- they were already entailed in something that was ongoing. And a lot of it had to do with Corps of Engineers, because they’re the ones that had the expertise, and the ability, and were working in the area of these marches. So, also there were some ongoing mitigation efforts with water development; and navigation projects, that they hoped to develop into the … into our Initiative Areas, and to make good projects out of those with marsh restoration. So, we started working in the rice prairies, and then, of course, in the coastal marshes. And either … we tried to work in the areas of, of course, protection / restoration and acquisition. And I think we ended up with about 75 projects by the end of about … after the first three years.
Bob Streeter -- So, we’ve had maybe, a total of about 70 years or so of experience, sitting around the table here. If you were to think about the successes, and maybe the obstacles, and roll that all into just a couple of suggestions for any Joint Ventures that would be starting, or people that would be starting new Joint Venture, whether it’s for the North American or for other types of species Joint Ventures, what one or two things would you want to make that Joint Venture Coordinator … what kind of advice would you want to give him so that … give him a leg up on their programs? Just jump in and kind of talk among yourselves on that. We’ve got about five minutes here.
Well, I think one of the first things that I’d do if I was, you know, setting one up from scratch, knowing what I know now, is when you for the Management Board, try to make sure that you really get people that have the interest, and have the ability, and maybe within the organization, or whatever, to get something accomplished. And that would provide the support. Because the support is one of the most important things. Whether it be state, or federal, or your non-government agencies, of which we had support. but when we had our initiatives, we had initiative chairpersons, and they all ended up being Fish & Wildlife Service people because … part of the problem was, because of the money issue, everything that was accomplished in the Joint Venture was in addition to what everybody’s job was in the first place. So, when your dealing with a program that requires people to put in a lot of effort, but it’s all in addition to what they’re already, you know, programmed to do, that makes it very difficult. And it didn’t take long before we started to have problems with people who were starting to really show concern, and were griping about the fact that … were they working for their … the refuge people -- were they working for refuges or were they working for the Joint Venture Coordinator. And that’s what it came down to. And those issues had to be resolved.
15
Bob Streeter -- Go ahead.
Well, I think when the smoke all settles, and at the end of the day, the thing that really counts, are not so much [indecipherable] as Coordinators, in my case, my individual technical skills that became important, it was my people skills. And, I think that if I were to give advice to any future Joint Venture Coordinator [it] is, initially, when you’re first starting organizing the people that you’re going to work with, kind of leave your technical skills at the door, and rely on your personal skills. Because it’s people that get work done. The technical part of it, because of who we are, come into play intuitively as we go through the process, but how we get it done is a people issue. And getting the best out of everybody as a facilitator, and that’s kind of what I think … what I looked at a Joint Venture Coordinators main job is, is to facilitate and get people to working together. And I guess my advice would be simply to use your best people skills to get in that direction. The technical stuff eventually takes place all on its own. Takes care of itself.
I guess one of the … some of the advice that I have given new Joint Venture Coordinators in the past, and this probably going to sound somewhat strange, and sometimes it takes them back, is to draw a clear distinction between two categories of partners. And what I’m fixing to say, you know, I got to caveat it by saying -- this is diverse country, and Washington state’s different from Louisiana, and South Dakota’s different from Alabama, and etcetera, etcetera. And, you know, we all have to deal with those, and work within those, very real differences within our country. But what I mean by two categories of partners -- there was a lot of impetus early on in the Joint Venture to get as many people to the table as you could. And I saw many times when that didn’t work, in my part of world. Didn’t work with the Corps. Didn’t work with EPA. you couldn’t keep them there, for vary and sundry reasons. And I thought many times, you know, about why is that. And that’s where I came up with this two categories of partners. And in category one there’s a group of partners that we have mutual interests, that’s generally pretty place specific and time specific. And those mutual interests can be with people that are very diverse with us -- range districts, irrigation districts, the Corps, EPA, local municipality, etcetera, etcetera. And we need to enter into partnerships, as necessary, you know, with those folks, to get those mutual interests fulfilled. But in terms of sustaining a Joint Venture over the long run, that other category of partners are those partners that by virtue of legislative authority or organizational mission, they share the burden for implementing the plan. And they share it just as real … that their burden for plan implementation is just as real as the Fish & Wildlife Service’s burden. And those are the people that I really want on the Management Board. I want somebody that’s there because they feel a burden for implementing this plan. And it’s a … so we’ve got those partners that our missions bring us together, and should keep us together over a long period of time, versus other partners that we have a mutual interest ….
End of Tape #3, Side A
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Start of Tape #3, Side B
…pretty place specific, pretty time specific. Pursue that mutual interest, but, you know, don’t think that you’ve got to have everybody and there dog on a Management Board. Because it, at least in out part of the world, it did not … it did not work.
Bob Streeter – Dave, do you have one word of wisdom?
Dave Paullin -- I think I would share Paul’s perspective about people skills. And I know when I was recruited for that job and looked at the position description, and like others have said today, you know our superiors really didn’t know what a Joint Venture Coordinator was; they didn’t know how to go about doing it; they didn’t know what a Joint Venture was. So they didn’t know what the appropriate skill set was. So, was it technical? So, in my case, you know, I was looked at as sort of a waterfowl biologist type. And so, you know, they thought that’s probably what was needed. But also, you know, they looked at people who had realty skills, and I, you know, I knew a little bit about realty, but I wasn’t a realtor, per se. But really, you know, as I got into it, and sort of made it happen, the technical skills sort of went to the side, because there’s a lot more people out there that know a lot more about waterfowl and wetlands than I do. But, it was really the people skills that were the driver, and moving those things through a project, or whatever it was, a partnership, it was the finessing of people that was the critical element there for success.
Bob Streeter -- Jerry …
Jerry Johnson -- I think the real strength of the North American is the Joint Ventures ability to do what they need to do to make things work in their area. There’s really no sideboards put on by the committee. Although, a few times, some of the folks back in D.C. are saying ‘well, all these Joint Ventures are doing all different things, they’re spending their money different ways, there should be more standardization.’ Well, we tell them, time after time, that our strength is a lack of standardization. I’ll tell the new Joint Venture Coordinators to take a look and see what the other Joint Ventures are doing, but figure out what works for their area. And make sure that we continue to have the freedom to do that. Make sure you lobby the council saying ‘this is the way it’s worked, this is why it’s worked, we don’t need any oversight.’ And another small thing is, I think it’s an advantage sometimes to start the Joint Venture with no funding, because then you know who the real partners are. I tell the newer Joint Ventures that aren’t funded yet, I tell them ‘this is the best years, ‘cause this is where you find out who the players are.’ When we first started we had no funding for quite a few years, and we decided we needed state steering coordinators, committee coordinators; and our Oregon coordinator -- his salary was paid for by BOR, Forest Service, partly Fish & Wildlife Service; his office was donated by the Defenders of Wildlife; his contract was handled by Ducks Unlimited. So, having no funding seems like a terrible burden, but later you need the funding. But it’s nice to start out lean and mean and see who the players really are.
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Bob Streeter -- Well, gentlemen, we’ve pretty much run out of our time line. I think that you’ve done a great job of explaining the types of things that went into the early Joint Ventures. And the bottom line that comes through is it’s what you did as Joint Venture Coordinators, with all your partners, that made the North American work. It sure seems like, for those of you that retired, this may have been kind of a pretty good career -- since you spent probably, at least half, except for Paul, half your life actually being a Joint Venture Coordinator in the Fish & Wildlife Service. So, big ‘thank you’ goes to you for what you’ve done, and what you continue to do.
Thank you
Thank you
Well, that didn’t hurt.
Most challenging and the most frustrating, all at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah.
Stay in the chairs.
Stay in the chairs.
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John Cornely -- Good morning. This is John Cornely and I’m here today with Harvey Nelson, [in a] continuation of our conversations about the history of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. And Harvey [has] participated in the last session and again on a panel in this session. So, were not going to try and recover … plow old ground again, Harvey, but there’s just a few things that we want to follow up on with you, about your days as the Executive Director of the North American Plan in the US Office in Minneapolis, especially. And some things that we’ve touched on, but we haven’t really discussed very much. And the first of those I’d like you to talk a little bit more about is the Implementation Board, or Committee. And I think we talked a little bit about, maybe, who was on that. But if you’d go over your recollection of who was on it, and kind of the role they played in helping get the Plan rolling.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, we knew early on as we started to form the overall organizational structure for the whole North American program that we needed as much help as we could get from the conservation organizations, the NGOs across the country. And that became even more important at the Washington level when we began to deal with the Congressional Committees about funding and other support. So, at that time there was a natural resource council … Natural Resources Council formed at the Washington level for which each major NGO had a representative or two. So, we got well acquainted with al those folks in the initial organization process, in the early days of the program. And out of that we decided that it would be probably a good stroke of business if we could convince about 12 / 14 or so - 15 - of the major organizations that were interested in the North American program to come together in some kind of a committee, or something, that would enable them to spend more direct time on our kinds of problems, in the early implementation phase. So, we talked about that. And the upshot of it all was that we established what we called the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Implementation Board. And the first Chairman of that was Matt Conley -- he was in the Executive Vice-President for Ducks Unlimited -- and he was assisted by Larry Youn -- who was the Vice-President of the Wildlife Management Institute. And very quickly, I’d say within the first 30 days, we had about 15 members from some of the key national conservation organizations, and related government agencies, ranging all the way from the Soil Conservation Service, at that time, to the Forest Service, to the Bureau of Land Management, to the Corps of Engineers. Anybody that had anything to do with habitat out there on the landscape throughout the country. Because there were certain elements of their programs that were very important to the North American Plan, in terms of habitat protection, or preservation, or development. Or to shift the emphasis on development to things that would be more beneficial to the waterfowl program, or the wetland program. So, that was the upshot of how that all came to be.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- But it was a very effective tool I think at that time. And those people and their own staffs, most of them all had their own legislative liaison officers that worked with the Congress, you know, on a daily basis practically. So, we had a direct route, direct pipeline so to speak, to many, many staff people, and key Congressional
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member’s offices that we didn’t have before that time. Would have taken a long time to have built that, so it was a good quick way of establishing that kind of relationship.
John Cornely -- Okay. And it sounds like they had a kind of a dual role where the liaison, and maybe in some cases, a little lobbying of Congress, but also probably, educating and promoting within their individual organizations and agencies support for the plan? Is that correct?
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, that’s very true. And also most of these organizations, and even the agencies, they all had their regional offices, or state offices, or some kind of a network across the country. And they were able to plug into that directly. So, not only were we getting support at the Washington level, but also from the field, back up through the grassroots, so to speak, to the, you know, through the political as well as the resource lines.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- So it was very helpful.
John Cornely -- Let’s also talk some more about the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Committee, which was separate from the Implementation Board, and part of the Plan itself. And talk again about kind of the composition of that and that was US and Canada and what their role was in the initial days of getting the plan up and running.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, it became apparent, even in the early days of drafting the Plan, what kind of oversight should be provided to help guide this whole program -- especially during its early years. And that Plan did provide for the establishment of a North American Plan Committee, so to speak, to do that -- provide that function. But, I think early on, it was very essential that we had that group in place. And that’s one reason it was formed pretty early in the game. And the Plan itself specified what that membership should be, in terms of representation between US and Canada, and state and federal agencies, and the NGOs, and that type of thing. So we quickly established that. Because we needed that kind of support. But it also provided a forum for the major participants in the plan -- in both US and Canada -- to come to the table together and begin to understand, you know, what was needed to really launch an effective program quickly at that stage. And, it also provided I think, a sense of security to the … say like the Flyway Councils, to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies representing the 50 states, and Canadian groups as well. They began to feel, right away then, that they had a forum they could come to, to have a better understanding of what their role should be. And it wasn’t something that the federal agencies, or some small group, was trying to shove down their throat, in terms of participation. They made their own choices. And I would say after about the second year there was a strong desire for state organizations, game and fish departments, other NGOs, federal agencies, to become a member of the Plan Committee. And I think that’s continued. I think its function has changed as the years have gone on, obviously. But, see I left the program when I retired in ’92, but even
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at that stage, from my perspective, the North American Plan Committee preformed a real, essential role in providing the oversight that was needed at that stage to … for … not only … send the message back down through the administrative channels and the political channels, but to provide a forum that people could come to if they saw there were problems developing, or they had new suggestions, in terms of how the plan should function, in both countries.
John Cornely -- Okay. Talk a little bit more about the dynamics and the relationships of you and your staff with the Plan Committee, with the … would the Plan Committee come to you and ask for some recommendations, or ask you … you and your staff to do some staff work, and bring recommendations? Did they … or did they come to you and say, you know, I think you ought to consider facilitation certain things, or developing guidelines? Just how did that relationship work?
Harvey Nelson -- Well, my first relationship to them was when they were first formed, when the full program was just being launched. And at that stage, they were more interested in learning about progress -- you know, are the Joint Ventures now being organized, and when will they be in place. And … but probably more importantly, when can we start seeing some results? And of course that was the tough part of it. That’s one reason we had the Flagship Projects, and the priority areas by Joint Venture. And those did serve a real purpose, as you’ve already heard from others. But, as the program was launched, and as the Joint Ventures came into being and became operational, and more work was being done on the ground, then there were increasing concerns about, you know, are we doing the right things in the right places? Is the information flow current? Do we really understand what’s going on out there right now? If not, then lets … people … we people that were involved, need to correct that or improve it. So there was, I think, an early and constant emphasis on communications. Which was good. But then, as the whole program became more complicated, and more activities took place, the money started to flow, then there were more questions like -- are we sure that what we’re doing, in terms of priorities and expenditure of funds, is being put in the right place? Are we using the best scientific information available to guide this program? If not, what do you need? And that got into the area where they came then to us to identify new needs, new support. And of course, over the years, that’s been reflected in the different kinds of committees that they’ve established; the emphasis, like, the new … the whole biological foundation of the Plan, that concept developed. And, over the years, it’s changed, I think, depending upon the nature of the program, and the kinds of confrontations, or the kind’s challenges that have arisen, in different parts of the country -- US and Canada. It was also the main forum for the US interests, and the Canadian interests, at the higher level, at the administrative levels, in those countries, to come together and talk about the same things. Which they didn’t … they probably did once or twice a year, but with the new Plan Committee in place, that gave an opportunity to do that more frequently.
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- And they met more frequently the first couple of years.
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John Cornely -- Okay. Another area I’d like to explore with you is a little bit of a follow up on an earlier panel we had this morning. We had some of the original Joint Venture Coordinators in a panel discussion, and they talked a little bit about how they came to be hired. And I know that you went around the country, within the Fish & Wildlife Service especially, and talked to most - if not all - the Regional Directors to see how you could identify folks, and get some of these Joint … original Joint Ventures started. I’d like you to talk to us a little bit about your recollection of some of those meetings, and what you were trying to accomplish, and how that all worked.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, you can imagine, with any new program, initially there was a just a lot of concern. First of all -- what’s it really all about? And we had to have a way to explain that, you know, rather fairly simple and clearly, and not in too much detail, as you would try to explain something new. Secondly, there was a lot of concern about -- what is a Joint Venture? Within the Fish & Wildlife Service, they had never really worked in that arena before. They had done a little work in partnerships, but when the basic principles of the North American Plan and its implementation process were geared to Joint Ventures and partnerships, that sort of brought new focus on this whole combination of this effort. So, then also, when the first Joint Ventures were established, the Regions involved, you know, they had to quickly decide how they were going to structure their Joint Venture. So, they were concerned about what kind of Coordinators … what are the criteria for a person that would be a Joint Venture Coordinator, because they had their own ideas as to who was right there with them, at the time, that might be just quickly transferred over. And that’s what happened with a good many of them. So, there were a lot of questions of that type. Of course, at that stage you know, I was a Regional Director, and we had periodic Directorate meetings. So, the whole North American Plan program and implementation aspect, became major points of discussion at Directorate meetings. Well, because of that, and because of the kinds of questions that were arising, I made a special effort, the first two to three years of the program, as things evolved, to go visit every Regional Director. Sat down in their office with them, with their appropriate Assistant Regional Directors that were to be involved, with the migratory bird or regional migratory bird coordinators, and other such people, and the realty folks that were working with wetland acquisition, and such programs -- and really had a detailed discussion about questions they had concerning the overall program. Questions about Joint Ventures, the Coordinators, how they’d function, who managed them, who they were responsible to. There was a lot of internal concern about -- who’s running this show. And kind of a fine line to tread, but …. So, I recognized that, and we made this special effort, and even after Bob came on staff … then he helped with that as well. But we made all these initial trips, to every Regional Office, to have a similar discussion. So everybody got the same message. And then as the Joint Ventures came onboard, and became active, then we had an additional series of visits with the Regional staffs, in terms of -- how things are going; where’re they at; what kind of other help or support do they need; are there any other internal conflicts, or program differences, that we should know about, that we might be able to help with, or help alleviate. And it sort of became more of an open family discussion, so to speak, at that point then, because we’d built a level of trust, I think, at that point, that -- at least we tried to -- so they’d have some faith in … and they understood what the role of the North American Office was in
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the US -- and the Canadian folks went through somewhat the same gyrations. But, I think that was an essential effort. And we had to do it with a bit of caution at first. Because, in the final analysis, the Regional Directors were responsible for the activity of those Joint Ventures in their Regions, and that was part of their job. And they’d been told, by the Director previous to that, that this is a high priority on your agenda, and we want to see you give all the possible support you can. And of course, in the initial years, that meant reprogramming some money, reassigning people. And … but, as others have said, there was just a lot of interest, and faith, in getting this program developed right, and getting it launched, getting it implemented, and getting the Joint Ventures underway on the ground. ‘Cause that’s where the end product was going to be, as far as waterfowl resource and wetlands were concerned. And this also, then, was reflected in how the different Regions went about helping establish, in coordination with the Joint Venture Coordinators, the Joint Venture Management Boards. Because, as you’ve already heard, that was another integral, very essential part, of this whole organizational structure. Because these Joint Venture Management Boards, in the final analysis, became the group that made the decisions as to what the priorities were within that Joint Venture -- state by state. And also, latter, the funding levels required. And of course, again, the cross-section of people that became Board members also had a lot of influence on how the different levels of support were developed state by state.
John Cornely -- Well, thank you Harvey. That, I think, fills in very nicely some of the small gaps that we had to fill. And, as always, I appreciate your time, and being a mentor to virtually all of us that have been involved in the North American Plan and migratory bird.
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, I appreciate that John. I’d just like to say one other thing if I could …
John Cornely -- Okay, sure.
Harvey Nelson -- It sort of goes back to how the whole concept was developed. And I was fortunate … you know, I was the Director of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center at the time we started talking about these things. And Jim Patterson was the Director of the Prairie Migratory Bird Research Center in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And, as a result, Jim Patterson and I had a lot of other mutual interests, and discussions about the research programs. But that subsequently led into this whole business about the formation of the National Waterfowl Management Plans that were developed, we talked about earlier. And then of course, Jim wound up going to Ottawa, and I would up going to Washington, and we continued to have this relationship. And when we got into this discussion about -- well, what’s the status of these National Waterfowl Plans? They don’t seem to really be going anywhere, or accomplishing what they thought they would. he and I thought … we had great faith in that … John Rogers with the Migratory Bird Program, at the time. And that’s what all sort of led to the formation of this Program Review Committee. Jim and I said ‘we got to get more people involved, from each agency that’s dealing with this part of the resource, at the highest level.’ And we set about to do that. so the Program Review Committee became a major vehicle, major
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forum, between the two federal agencies, to address all these problems. And out of that, of course, arose the whole concept of ‘we need an umbrella program, an umbrella Plan’ that became the North American Waterfowl Plan. So, my hat’s off to Jim, God rest his soul.
John Cornely -- Okay, all right.
Harvey Nelson -- There’s just one thing we haven’t talked about …
John Cornely -- Okay.
Harvey Nelson -- … at any of these meetings, I don’t believe, is the logo.
John Cornely -- Well, let’s talk about the logo.
Harvey Nelson -- Well, I won’t take too long.
John Cornely -- It’s right here.
Harvey Nelson -- Here it is. And Bob Streeter knows the origin of this. Jim McCuag does. And of course, I got to know Jim pretty well …
John Cornely -- Another representation here.
Harvey Nelson -- Yeah, all right. Anyway … and Jim McCuag is aware of some of this history too, because when he succeeded Patterson [indecipherable] but anyway, early on in the program, one of the consulting firms that we worked with, and we worked with some different groups, matter of fact David Case and Associates -- that’s now [a] nationally, well recognized group -- had some of their first assignments with this … one of his first projects was to do an analysis of the North American Plan, and its organization and implementation. But, anyway, out of that came the immediate decision that ‘one thing you guys have got to do right … fast, is establish recognition. And you need a logo, that’ll help do that.’ And we thought, ‘well, like what, you want more ducks and geese on a plaque or something or …’ ‘No it[’s] got to be something different than that.’ And, in the Minneapolis area, there were a number of design companies and whatnot, that were … had some reputation for doing those things. So, we made contact with the firm, and the individual that did the initial logo for the John Deer Corporation, you know, the deer in the green field and the fence and all that, and sat down and talked with him, and he said ‘you’re right on target.’ He says ‘you guys need … you should have had your recognition in place already, you’re not going to get much farther unless you can do that quickly.’ So, he says, ‘tell me what you think a good logo would be.’ And we talked about the normal things that we think about in the wildlife field. And he said ‘no, it’s got to be something simple, something eye-catching, and it’s got to represent the objectives of your program.’ And he said ‘here you’ve got a program between two countries, and so,’ he said ‘I’ll think about that.’ ‘Bout two days later, he called up and said ‘come on down, I got an idea.’ He says ‘here you got this waterfowl
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program, basically a waterfowl / wetland program, with Canada.’ He says ‘wetlands are kind of hard to put in a logo’ but he says ‘you can do a lot with birds.’ And that’s when he said ‘what do you think about putting a flying bird, and it … ones tilted upside down to the other?’ And it … the whole theory was that this represents touching wings -- a co-operation between two parties -- between two countries in this case. And that became the logo.
John Cornely -- What was this gentleman’s name … from the John Deer Corporation?
Harvey Nelson -- Right off … I’d have to go look in the records. I don’t remember his name specifically, but we should get that.
John Cornely -- We need to record that in the record. But that … thank you very much … that, you know, I don’t know why we … that hasn’t come up sooner, but now we’ve got it down. And so ….
Harvey Nelson -- And Jim McCaug and I took this to a meeting, just prior to a North American Plan Committee, I think it was in Washington. And we said ‘well, before we try it on the Committee, let’s try it on our wives.’ And they said ‘gee, that sounds great, you know, why even go to the Committee?’ But we did.
John Cornely -- Okay. Good. All right. Thank you very much, again, Harvey.
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